


Almost Paradise

by HollyDB



Series: Paraverse [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Be Careful What You Wish For, Community: seasonal_spuffy, Dark Magic, Depression, F/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:47:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 81,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27749986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollyDB/pseuds/HollyDB
Summary: When presented with the opportunity to magically alter the world she lives in, Buffy knows there are a lot of very good reasons why she shouldn't seize it, but figures things can't get worse. She's wrong.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Series: Paraverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086743
Comments: 90
Kudos: 106





	1. Go on, go on, and disappear. Go on, go on, away from here

**Author's Note:**

> I truly did not set out to start another story set in Season 6, especially after having literally just wrapped up a Season 6 rewrite. I also did not set out to write anything that I would classify as super!dark. Then things happened. What things? Seasonal Spuffy, and their fairytale-themed Fall 2020 round. I pulled up a list of fairytales to peruse, thinking I’d find something obscure to riff off, because fairytales ain’t my thing. I was also hoping for a one-shot, or something under 20k. Let’s just say, none of my initial impressions ended up being on the money. 
> 
> The list of fairytales I found included W.W. Jacobs’ _The Monkey’s Paw,_ which I thought would be a neat twist on the theme. And when my brain switched from Spike being the subject of the paw’s wishes to Buffy, a whole world of terrible possibilities opened up. And here we are.
> 
> This won’t be an easy ride, friends. At least not for me. I don’t particularly gravitate toward dark stuff anymore (and hey, my take on “dark” could be tame compared to others) but there are stories that beg to be written and once this occurred to me, I knew I didn’t have a choice. All I ask is that you trust me and when things seem bleak, that I am a romance writer first and foremost, and romance has only one unbreakable rule. Also, I'll be adding warnings as the story progresses and we get to relevant chapters. I'm not showing my full hand just yet to help avoid spoilers. 
> 
> I really can’t thank OffYourBird enough for helping me develop this, and walking me through some logistics issues, and reinforcing the creative decisions I’ve made for later in the story. And thanks, as always, to bewildered, Kimmie Winchester, Niamh, and Behind Blue Eyes for betaing.

_“Be careful what you wish for, you may receive it.”_ – Anonymous

* * *

“Umm, this doesn’t look like it did in the pictures.”  
  
Buffy felt her spirits plummet harder, if such were possible, and tried to keep from physically deflating right along with them. Right, because the only thing that could make this day better was a hard-to-please customer who didn’t realize that cameras had limitations and salespeople always talked up their products to make money. But this was her job now—at least today—so she had to make it work.  
  
There weren’t many ways Anya could still be threatening—but cost her a customer, and Buffy trusted the former demon would find creative means of seeking vengeance.  
  
“I’m sure that was just the lighting,” she said in her brightest customer-service voice. Not that lighting could have done much for the hand. It was small, furry, and a bit on the shriveled side. Three fingers were extended, the ring and pinky folded in against the palm, like it had been chopped off in the middle of indicating how much of a certain item it wanted. Or how many minutes to wait. Or maybe how many siblings it had—there were so many possibilities. In all the severed limbs Buffy had seen, and unfortunately that number was likely somewhere in the triple digits, none had ever been in a fixed pose like this. Maybe that was what made it magic.  
  
“Where are the bandages?” the woman demanded, wrinkling her nose and nudging the thing across the cash wrap counter. “It’s not moving, either.”  
  
“You wanted a mummy’s hand that…moves.”  
  
The woman rolled her eyes and gave her a look that women like her had been giving store clerks since the dawn of time. Buffy knew. While she hadn’t been old enough to pull it off, she’d once had the teenage-equivalent of that look. A look that came with an attitude that made the world of customer service a nightmare for all retail associates. Now she was gazing into a mirror of what might have been.  
  
“What is the point of a _dead_ hand?” the woman asked as though scandalized. “Prosperity spells are tricky enough to get right if you have all the correct ingredients. Whatever _this_ is…I don’t think this will work.”  
  
That did it. Her voice evidently carried loudly enough to have Anya’s loss-of-commission radar going off. The next second, the former demon was shoulder-to-shoulder with Buffy, fake smile in place. “Hello,” she said brightly. “I am Anya Jenkins, Magic Box proprietor. How may we help you?”  
  
The woman blinked and gave a nervous look around. Come to think of it, she’d seemed a little shifty ever since she’d whisper-shouted what it was she’d come here to buy. “I need a mummy hand for a prosperity spell,” she said before lowering her gaze to the thing Buffy had brought up from the lower level. “They are supposed to move, aren’t they?”  
  
Anya glanced to the item in question and blanched. “Oh, no,” she said, snatching the hand-thingy up in a flash. The smile on her face was now more a grimace, her eyes wide with something Buffy was suddenly certain was alarm. “This—no. Not what you want. Sorry,” she added, patting Buffy’s shoulder with her free hand. “She’s a little…well, stupid. My apologies.”  
  
“Hey!” Buffy jerked away, scowling. “She asked for a hand and I found—whatever that is.”  
  
“This is not for sale,” Anya went on, not taking her gaze off the customer, whose expression now looked closer to curiosity, even interest. “Buffy, follow me please. We need to get this nice paying lady what she came for.”  
  
The next thing she knew, Buffy had been shoved through the door that led to the lower level by a very harried Anya, who immediately dropped whatever had remained of her customer-service smile. “A monkey’s paw?” she hissed. “Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what these things can do?”  
  
Buffy swallowed the immediate response. Obviously, _no,_ she didn’t know what they could do because she clearly couldn’t tell the difference between a mummy hand and a…whatever that was. Twenty minutes into her first day in customer service and she already knew this was not the vocation for her. She took a healthy amount of crap from regular vampires and demons—she really _didn’t_ need to add Anya to her list of harassers.  
  
“How did you even get it out of its case?” Anya asked when they reached the ground floor. “Giles swore he put a protective charm on it, and if he lied to me on top of bringing one of these things into my shop, I’m going to call the Department of Immigration and have his British butt deported.”  
  
Well, there was a lot of questionable information delivered in that sentence. “I don’t know. I was just looking around, opening stuff—it is _really_ hard to find things down here, by the way. And I opened this thing and it was there.” Buffy glanced down at the thing, wrinkling her nose. “What did you say it was?”  
  
“A monkey’s paw.” Anya took the time to enunciate each syllable, as though the speed at which she spoke was the barrier between Buffy and understanding what the big deal was. “Don’t you know anything?”  
  
“About monkeys? No. Even less about paws.” She wrinkled her nose and glanced around the storage room. It wasn’t a place she’d made a point to visit often, being neither witch nor Magic Box staff. Aside from a few things she’d been forced to hunt out and grab in the year since Giles had bought the place, she’d spent very little time among the inventory, which seemed more a haphazard collection of assorted crap than anything anyone would want to actually buy. “It took forever to find, too. Are you saying you have more chopped off body parts down here?”  
  
Anya shook her head, sighing hard and striding with intent toward a cupboard pressed against the far wall. “Monkey’s paws are extraordinarily rare,” she said matter-of-factly, plucked something off the ground—the fancy case, Buffy saw—and shoved the hairy appendage back inside the satin-lined interior. “And dangerous.”  
  
“So you’ve said. Which begs the question, why do you have one, especially if it’s not for sale?”  
  
“Because Giles has decided that it’s not enough that we sell magical wares to the public,” Anya continued, shoving the case back onto a shelf—right between a creepy-looking doll and a bizarre statuette of a naked lady demon with a lolling tongue that would make Gene Simmons jealous. “Anytime he gets wind of a dangerous dark object, he insists on pulling out all the stops—not to mention all of my money—to acquire it.” She rolled her eyes and brought up her hands to make air quotes. “To ‘prevent potential catastrophes of apocalyptic proportions’ or something like that.”  
  
Buffy frowned, eyeing the case warily. “So…that thing could set off the apocalypse?”  
  
How? It was so little. Not to mention furry.  
  
“Possibly,” Anya replied, walking past her now, focused on something on the other side of the room. “It depends on what one wishes.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Monkey’s paws grant wishes.”  
  
That hardly sounded apocalyptic. Buffy watched as Anya foraged through the inventory, trying and failing to come up with a reason why an item that granted wishes was a bad thing, which she was sure said something about her and her state of mind. Obviously, wishes could go very wrong—Anya herself had been in the trade long enough to tell some truly horrific stories that Buffy could never unhear. But those instances had involved people who either hadn’t known they were talking to someone with the ability to bring their wishes to life or hadn’t considered the consequences of what they were asking. Such as the instance that had spawned a universe with a skanky vampire version of Willow. Buffy was vague on the details but knew it had involved Cordelia and a wish gone wonky—one that had been thankfully righted.  
  
Of course, there was also the obvious. If someone wanted to end the world and got hold of a paw, well, that would be a surefire way to do it.  
  
“Just so I know,” Buffy asked, wandering toward the shelf Anya was currently pilfering, “how many thingamabobs out there have the ability to grant wishes? Like, are magic lamps a thing? Shooting stars?”  
  
“What?” Anya didn’t even bother to look at her, rather scowled and placed another box aside. “Damn mummy hand.”  
  
“And how do you keep track? How does anyone? If something that small can make a big kaboom, then—”  
  
“They aren’t _common_ , Buffy,” Anya said, still not looking at her, squatting now to investigate the lower shelf. “I’ve only ever seen one other aside from that one, and I’m pretty sure the one I saw _was_ that one. Three fingers extended, one per wish. There’s a scar on the index knuckle that was the same pattern as one of Olaf’s birthmarks and unless all monkeys just _come_ that way—”  
  
“So magic wishes aren’t something I should worry about.”  
  
“No more so than you were already.” She grunted, then hooted in victory and shot to her feet, a box in hand. “Here we are,” she said, thrusting it into Buffy’s arms. “One mummy hand. Now go make that sale.”  
  
Buffy blinked at the box, her throat dry. “But the monkey—”  
  
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Buffy, don’t worry about the monkey’s paw. Giles is looking up ways to destroy it, and since I am ninety-nine percent certain it’s the same paw I saw in 1158, I doubt wayward wishes cast by a cursed severed primate appendage are worth your concern.” She gave the box a little push—and Buffy by association since she was still holding it. “Sell this item. And don’t let her talk you down from the sale price. They always try to do that with exotic imports. Now, this has taken up enough of my time. I have an order that must be ready before the nice man from the postal service arrives, so try not to mess anything else up, okay?”  
  
Anya was gone the next instant, rushing back up the stairs at a clip, leaving Buffy feeling a bit railroaded, but nothing was new there. That was just the way things were now, at least when it came to newly not-dead slayers navigating the afterlife, minus the _after_ part. Other people got blissful detachment, a sense of utter completion and peace, not to mention the comfort of knowing that their loved ones, despite the pain and turmoil, would be all right. Other people—not Buffy. No, Buffy got well-meaning friends and a one-way ticket out of Heaven so she could resume the life that had rejected her. Get back to the daily grind of avoiding death every night so that her friends could live their lives every day.  
  
That was life. Not what it had always been, granted, but the thing it had become. Instead of freedom, she had this—surfing through magical wares to find enchanted items that did god-knows-what for snot-nosed customers who thought they could magic their way to prosperity. Like Buffy would be working retail if prosperity was a thing she could just _get_.  
  
It wasn’t, was it? She’d have to ask Willow. Maybe. If she still cared enough to ask later. Right now, all of her energy was focused on getting through this moment, because the next one would be just as bad.  
  
Buffy shuffled her way toward the staircase, jostling the box under one arm. Then she paused, cast a glance across the room at the other shelf where Anya had stuffed the monkey’s paw. She had thought it looked a bit small for a mummy hand, but she’d never seen a mummy hand to make a comparison. If her adventures in the wide world of retail lasted beyond today—fat chance but she wasn’t exactly rolling in options—she supposed that was the sort of thing she should know to avoid other goof-ups, of which she assumed Anya would only be so forgiving. Best to get a look down here to avoid the inevitable face she would make upon presenting a paying customer with something ookie.  
  
So Buffy placed the box on a nearby pallet of what looked to be crushed weed—all the herbs looked like weed to her—and pried open the lid.  
  
And immediately wished she hadn’t. The bandaged thing—and yes, it _was_ bandaged; one point to the British lady—seemed to have been waiting for some unsuspecting idiot to let it loose. She barely had a chance to frown at it before it leaped from the box and wound its fingers around her throat in a surprisingly strong grip for something attached to nothing at all. The box went tumbling to the floor as Buffy backed up into a rolling cart of things she really didn’t want to break, prying at the hand intent on crushing her windpipe. It took a few tugs, but she managed to loosen its hold on her long enough to toss it back onto the pallet. A quick look around and a dagger-grab later, and she had the murderous thing run through with the blade. A blade garnished with a fancy an inlay mother of pearl handle. Giles never let her have things that nice.  
  
Buffy frowned and raised the kebobbed hand to eye-level, surveying the damage. Something told her that the prosperity spell was a moot point, but she supposed she owed it to Anya to try. She had just damaged Magic Box property, after all.  
  
With a sigh, she headed upstairs.

* * * * *

This was one of those “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry” scenarios, but Buffy wasn’t laughing. Someone had put the whammy on her. Not a good whammy, either—a Bill Murray whammy. There was a reason _Groundhog Day_ had never been one of her favorite movies, much to Xander’s horror and continued admonitions. Something about watching a guy live through each day over and over again had only increased her anxiety, to the point that it had almost more of a relief for Buffy than for Bill’s character when “I’ve Got You Babe” was interrupted by Andie McDowell on the day that today became tomorrow.  
  
But at least Bill had had an entire day to loop and an entire town to explore. He’d been able to fill the hours with different things—even if those things had been finite, there had been options. Buffy’s loop was much less generous. A stretch of ten to twenty minutes, give or take, entirely dependent upon whether or not she could sedate the damn mummy hand without killing it. Or bring it up to the customer in the box, as she’d tried several times. No dice. The second she opened the lid—because she _had_ to open the lid so the customer could see the goods—the mummy hand would lunge for her throat and she’d be forced to kill it, which landed her back at square one.  
  
Also, Giles and Anya seemed equally apathetic about it. Or perhaps they both thought she was nuts. After attempting to explain what was going on for the seventeenth time, Buffy gave up. The limited time window tied her to a fixed set of circumstances. The customer was hers to deal with—she’d trying pawning her off on Anya to no success. By the time she managed to communicate what was happening to Giles—and the few times she’d gotten him to believe it was real—the loop closed again. She’d tried stalling. She’d tried bolting. She’d tried throwing a temper tantrum that would embarrass a toddler. Nothing had worked. This was her life now, apparently.  
  
Buffy had lost count of the hours. At this point, entire weeks might have flown by. She wasn’t hungry—whoever had caught her in this loop had been considerate enough to make sure her body reset to the place it had been before the loop started, so things like food and bathroom breaks weren’t a concern. Although that also might mean she’d literally be stuck here forever without the prospect of starving to death to look forward to.  
  
And those were thoughts no one needed, least of all her. The dark turns her mind had taken after the resurrection had been mostly navigable, even in the bleaker moments when she’d thought she might actually follow them to see where they led. But she couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ let her mind stay there for long. Death might not scare her but the thought of killing herself did. She wasn’t sure what the difference was, but there _was_ a difference—a line in her head dividing the two concepts.  
  
Now, though, in hour whatever of this infernal torment, the prospect no longer felt off-limits. There _was_ a way out of this, she knew, but how long before she found it? How much could she withstand before she lost whatever was left of her mind?  
  
There was an alternative, though. One she kept coming back to—almost literally—every time she plodded down the stairs to take another swing at mummy-hand wrangling. An alternative situated on a shelf between a creepy doll and a Gene Simmons statuette.  
  
How bad would it be, really, to wish the loop would end? And even if it was bad, could it be worse than this?  
  
_Yes,_ the logical side of her head had proclaimed for a few hours. _If Giles wants it out of circulation, it’s definitely a bad._  
  
But as her patience thinned and the loop grew no closer to closing itself, she began to doubt just how rational her rational side actually was. The thing she was trapped inside was something she couldn’t fight—at least, not in a way that was obvious—and whatever happened as a result of her monkey’s paw wish could be handled. Really, after facing down a hellgod and being yanked out of Heaven, there really wasn’t much Buffy feared in terms of repercussions.  
  
Though once she opened that mental door, there was no stopping her. If one wish was easy to rationalize, why not two? Why not all three?  
  
So for the next two hours or so, in between running interference with mummy hand lady and being ignored by her watcher and Anya, Buffy let her mind go in a different direction entirely. What, exactly, would she wish for, if she were to wish at all?  
  
First of all, she would wish her way to financial stability. No more of this retail business. No more getting flak because she happened to be stronger than every guy on Xander’s construction team and a few of them were too testosterony to admit their butts had been saved by a girl. If she didn’t have to work, she would be in a position where she could apply her focus elsewhere. Say on whoever the hell was screwing with her at the present, as they had an ass-kicking appointment she was determined to meet. Money didn’t solve all her problems but it would solve the ones that kept her up at night, worrying about paying the electric bill or field trip expenses or, well, anything else. It was simple and not very imaginative—she figured most people would wish for money—but there was a reason the classics never went out of style.  
  
The second wish was an offshoot of the first and came to her almost as quickly. She needed money because she was the sole provider for the family and had to prove herself responsible and capable of taking care of her sister. Not having to worry about losing Dawn would be a massive check in the Win column.  
  
The third wish took longer to dream up. Perhaps that could be the throwaway wish—what got her out of this loop. But now that she’d ruminated on the fact for a while, that seemed a waste of a perfectly good wish, and she just knew something brilliant would occur to her afterward that would leave her kicking herself. She made all the mental stops—her friends were all about as happy as clams, whatever that meant, her family was her sister and her sister was the subject of Hypothetical Wish Number Two, and then…Giles. Giles had already done what she’d needed him to do in coming back. The only other person in her life wasn’t a person at all, though he was the only non-person person she could stand to be around these days.  
  
And it was just him. Spike. Buffy had thought it might be the fact that he was the closest thing to hanging out with death that she had these days, being that he was a vampire. That bothered her—more because she knew it _should_ bother her. Pre-mortem Buffy would have been appalled at the thought of spending so much time with Spike. Or, maybe not mortified—there at the end, after he’d sacrificed himself to protect Dawn and her feelings had taken a sharp left turn that she’d never been given the chance to explore—but it would have wigged her out a little. Bothered her probably a lot. Spike being anything other than an evil fiend had twisted her up and good, though she’d been too focused on keeping her sister safe to really allow herself to think it through, much less talk it out with the people she typically relied on.  
  
But since she’d been back, those thoughts had existed more as memories than actual beliefs. A reminder of how Buffy Summers viewed the world and those around her, which did more to make her feel like a shadow of herself than perhaps anything else. Buffy Summers didn’t fraternize with the undead, and when she did, it was out of need, not want. Unless the undead in question was Angel, and then it became all about the want.  
  
Except that wasn’t what had happened. She’d gone to him—ready to offload all of her mixed-up feelings and experience that blessed relief with the right person. The person who made sense, whose silences wouldn’t be awkward and attention would be absolute and without judgment. The ball of dread that had taken up camp in her belly whenever she found herself alone with her friends was supposed to stay away—far away. After all, no one knew her better than Angel.  
  
But Angel didn’t know her, either. And she didn’t know him. Not like she had. Seeing him had left her feeling more hollowed out than she’d been since the first night. All that expectation, all the assurance, all the certainty that simply being in the same space with Angel would bring her that Spike-brand of comfort had evaporated so fast she’d crashed hard. It was natural, she told herself, that two people separated by so much time would have nothing to say to each other. That catching up would amount to little more than small talk, even with something as large and ungainly as a resurrection to keep the conversation going. She’d coughed out how hard it was to live, and Angel had given her a hug and patted her back and told her that it would get better, she could overcome anything, and it had felt like he was talking to a Buffy who didn’t exist anymore.  
  
If he hadn’t moved away, or if things had managed to work out, life would be very different. No awkward silences. No forced small talk. No empty platitudes in place of anything meaningful. He would know how to talk to her, and she would know how to talk to him, and maybe being alive again wouldn’t be so damned suffocating.  
  
That line of thinking solidified into her third wish. That things had worked out with Angel, so at least he could remain the sole freaky thing in her freaky world that made sense, as he had so long ago.  
  
Once the wishes were there, all in a line— _money, Dawn, Angel_ —the resolve to keep from migrating toward the case containing the monkey’s paw went from solid steel to wisps of straw. Particularly when she considered that a world where Angel was still with her would be a different world, one without a mummy hand loop. Probably. And even if the loop continued, he could help break her out. That world was alight with all sorts of possibilities.  
  
Still, Buffy didn’t rush over to the shelf the second the plan locked into place. She still had her misgivings, having seen more than one wish go badly. It took perhaps another hour, maybe two, of repeated attempts to offload the mummy hand before something inside of her snapped and she found herself, instead of striding toward the box Anya had shown her approximately seven lifetimes ago, closing the distance between herself and that creepy doll. Like the paw was calling to her or something—or maybe that was just the call of sweet relief. The knowledge that not only would the loop likely end, but the world she’d find out there would be a better one.  
  
And if it wasn’t, Giles would help her switch it back. He’d know what to do. Given enough time to explain a predicament to him, he never failed to come up with a solution. Or, at the very least, lay the groundwork for Buffy to get there herself.  
  
The monkey’s paw seemed strangely warm to the touch when she collected it out of its casing. She released a shaky breath, shoved aside the last niggle of doubt, and said, “I wish I didn’t have to worry about money.”  
  
Nothing happened—at least, not at first. Then, slowly, one hairy finger curled in on itself.  
  
_Holy moly, does that mean it worked?_ Invigorated, Buffy plowed on ahead, though her brain started throwing up roadblocks immediately. If this was working, it meant she needed to do it right. No tripping over verbiage—she needed the right combination of words, which seemed suddenly evasive.  
  
Finally, after a few seconds of fumbling—and then worrying she had waited too long—she swallowed and blurted, “I wish for Dawn to stay with her family.”  
  
A second monkey finger coiled.  
  
All right. One to go.  
  
“I wish there had been a way for Angel and me to stay together.”  
  
She held her breath as the extended thumb folded inward, shivering with a bizarre combination of excitement and dread.  
  
It was done. And if it worked…  
  
_God, if it worked?_  
  
The thought had barely blipped across her mind before the lights in the basement flickered and died, pitching her into darkness.


	2. Swung and missed. I put my heart in this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to bewildered, Kimmie Winchester, Niamh, and Behind Blue Eyes.

It had been a damn long time since Buffy had been afraid of the dark.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, dragging in deep breaths, waiting for something in the shadows to leap out at her. That was typically what happened when the lights were cut—some creature feature tried to press its luck and gain the advantage. And given that she had just used a dark magical artifact, it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that a hungry demon would be the price of doing business. Though if that were the case, she was going to give Anya some serious grief about not reading the fine print.

As seconds lapsed into minutes, though, Buffy’s nerves began to calm. She didn’t sense anything in the surrounding dark—at least nothing that set off her Slayer tinglies. After waiting another beat to give anything that might be lurking nearby one last opportunity to strike, she took a step forward, right into what felt like a rolling shelf—one that had definitely not been there before. She struck her shin on something hard and metal, then went stumbling back and into another shelf that had also materialized from nowhere. It jostled and rolled with the force of the contact, sliding into something else, which set off what could have been the chain reaction from hell, but thankfully lost momentum before anything important could break.

Buffy reached out to feel the air around her, cursing whoever out there had decided that slayers didn’t need a preternatural sense of sight—or at least one advanced enough to separate shadows from space in windowless, pitch-black rooms. Thankfully, instinct and muscle memory kicked in—the same that came to her rescue in those fights where she couldn’t rely on her eyes—and helped her edge between the shelves toward the staircase that would take her to the shop proper. It wasn’t until she was at the door that she realized something was missing.

The monkey’s paw that had been in her hand had vanished.

Her heart gave a thump, then another. What did that mean? Had she dropped it? She didn’t think so—not with the death grip she’d had on the thing. Buffy swore under her breath and whirled back around, feeling with one hand along the wall for the light switch. The resulting brightness damn near blinded her, but she squinted and forced her eyes to adjust, then felt her jaw go slack.

The place was packed to bursting, stuffed with numerous rolling shelf carts, all piled ceiling-high with inventory. It seemed the entirety of the Magic Box’s wares had been stuffed down here. Everything from the fake crystal balls and sage to the collection of ancient books that lined the shop’s upper level had been crammed haphazardly anywhere they could be forced to fit. While she’d known just from trying to get to the door that the basement was fuller than it had been, the sight of just how much fuller had her mind blanking so thoroughly that she forgot about the monkey’s paw until she turned to help herself back out of the door.

For a moment, she didn’t move, considering the sea of inventory below and wondering if she could even find her way back to the place she’d been standing when the lights had gone out. What had felt a little cluttered but mostly organized just a few minutes ago had become utter chaos. No visual landmarks, no natural partitions sectioning off various areas—it was just a hodgepodge of, well, the Magic Box.

“If I need it, I know where to look,” Buffy muttered, whirling back around. Careless, yes, but she was too eager to get home.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, considering the state of disarray that was the downstairs, to find the Magic Box empty, but Buffy was surprised anyway. She hadn’t known what she expected—hadn’t really prepared herself for anything, come to think of it, but the scene that greeted her had her heart somersaulting all over again. All that was left were a few display tables, scattered haphazardly and at angles that suggested they had been shoved into their current positions rather than deliberately situated. Like people had blown through in a hurry. Hell, even the cash register was gone.

How in the world had any of her wishes shut down the Magic Box?

_What did I do?_

No. _No_. She’d taken too large a chance to give up on it just yet. And it was too soon to start worrying. She just needed more information, that was all, and she would learn nothing just standing around. There could be a very reasonable explanation as to why the Magic Box was shuttered. She needed to get out of here—get home, figure out exactly what the hell had happened, and go from there.

Buffy wet her lips, looked around again to see if she had missed anything—even if there didn’t seem to be anything to miss—and jolted when her gaze landed on a set of keys on the table closest to the entrance. It was a familiar keyring—hers—and complete with the novelty keychain Dawn had given her for her birthday. That was right, normal. Meant this was where she was supposed to be. Except the keyring looked off, like the shape it had landed in wasn’t one that fit. It wasn’t until she picked the thing up and handled it that she saw why. There was the house-key, as well as the key to her mom’s gallery—defunct as it was, she had never had the heart to remove it—as well as a new key. One she didn’t recognize.

_To the shop, maybe?_

One way to find out. She opened the door and stuck the key in the lock. It turned, and she released a long sigh.

Well, there was one question answered, at least. But if her first ten minutes in this brave new world were anything to go off, she was in for a long night.

* * * * *

So far so good.

Over the last year and a half, Buffy had been bombarded with firsthand accounts of how, exactly, a simple wish could go wrong. She’d focused specifically on those stories as her desperation to break the time loop had strengthened and her concern about the consequences had whittled away to nothing. Given that she had rattled off three wishes from a supposedly super dark object, she wasn’t sure exactly what to expect when she stepped outside the Magic Box. Things _inside_ the Magic Box had wigged her out enough.

But the world wasn’t burning. Demons weren’t running rampant down the streets. Everything seemed more or less normal. The walk home took the appropriate amount of time, and she passed any number of people who seemed perfectly ordinary, if not happy. Parents getting home from work, kids playing in the front lawn, dogs barking, birds squawking—all in all, another day in Sunnydale. Humans going about their human lives, either not aware or not caring that the Hellmouth festered beneath their feet, calling out to all manner of creatures to wreak havoc when the sun went down.

It wasn’t until she turned onto Revello Drive that the reality of her wishes caught up with her, though, and it occurred to her just who might be swinging by for her nightly patrol. What would a world in which things had worked out with Angel even look like? Did they have a routine she should know about? A schedule they followed? They hadn’t been in a relationship since she was in high school—which felt now a thousand years in the past—and everything about her had been different then. Everything about _them_ had been different, very much the product of her mother not being Angel’s number one fan and the clear boundaries they had been forced to adhere to in order to keep Angel from unleashing his inner beast.

Buffy would just have to hope she could fake it convincingly until she had all the missing pieces. Would have been nice if the wishes had included a new set of memories—or at least a cheat-sheet—to help clue her into whatever she was about to discover, but she supposed that had been asking too much. Right now, she was just fortunate the world hadn’t imploded.

She sucked in a breath and walked up the steps to her porch, wondering if she had time to change before Angel dropped by. And Dawn—she’d need to establish what the routine was there as well. Her sister should have been home for a while, hopefully catching up on homework and doing other sorts of things normal in a stable, secure household—the sort that would never be under the scrutiny of social services.

Those were things she would have to bluff her way through until the norms of this world became obvious. She could do this—she’d been pretending around her friends for a couple of weeks now, and no one had so far doubted her “I was in a hell dimension” story.

Buffy pushed the front door open, then stepped inside. At first look, everything seemed to be normal, if perhaps in a different state of disarray from what she’d left that morning. There was the dining room to her right, table and everything, and the living room to her left. The air smelled vaguely off—not bad, just not the _home_ she was accustomed to, but that could be anything. The tension that had coiled in her stomach began to unwind, and she let herself relax.

That was until she walked far enough inside for the sound of gunshots and squealing tires to reach her ears. Television sounds—nothing abnormal there—but Buffy had _just_ had a conversation with Dawn about doing her homework before turning anything on. And though her brain had been on the sluggish side ever since she’d crawled her way out of her grave, she was reasonably certain she remembered her sister complaining about an English essay she had to turn in by Friday. Wishing herself into a new life likely hadn’t done anything to change a class syllabus, which meant it was time to pretend like everything was normal and act the part of the parent.

“Hey,” Buffy said in her gearing-up-for-a-lecture voice as she rounded the corner to the living room, “I really hope you have that—”

She stopped short in the doorway, her heart seizing.

The person on her couch wasn’t Dawn. It was Angel.

_Angel._

It was a moment before she could do anything more than blink. Of all the possibilities that had crowded her brain between the Magic Box and home, that she would find Angel already here—waiting for her, dressed like he’d stayed the night—hadn’t made the roster. In truth, she wasn’t sure she’d really believed any of what she’d told herself on that walk home until right now. That the wishes had been anything more than something whispered in a fit of desperation hadn’t solidified in her head as a true possibility, even after finding the shop all closed up. That any magical artifact had the ability to fix her life, and to do so without fanfare, had been too bright a thing to hope for, especially since she hadn’t felt anything like hope in longer than she could remember.

But he was here. Angel. And judging by his wardrobe—a wife-beater and a pair of pajama bottoms—he’d been here for some time. In her home, on her couch, watching her television. He hadn’t even looked up.

Astonishment began to wane, edged out by that sense of wrongness that had enveloped her at the Magic Box. “Angel?”

A beat, then he grunted. A small grunt, more a huff, but nothing further. Not so much as a glance in her direction. Buffy pressed her lips together, worry rushing back in at full speed as she took in the rest of the scene. The potato chip bag sitting on the coffee table next to a collection of beer bottles, the dried stain that stretched across his wife-beater, like he had spilled something and just decided to let it set. He was unshaven and his hair was in a mess that suggested he hadn’t done anything to clean himself up today, and his gaze, though unfocused, was fixed on the screen. He had one hand loosely tucked into the waistline of his pants and the other curled around the remote, and unless her eyes were playing tricks with her, his belly looked a bit…round. Not a ton—it could have easily been a trick of the light—but enough to have her inner alarm bells sounding at full blast.

“Angel?” Buffy repeated, stronger this time.

This time she got more than a grunt. He pulled his attention off the television long enough to nod at her in greeting. “Hey. Did you find it?”

“Find it?”

He rolled his eyes and lowered his feet from the coffee table in a move that was so completely un-Angel-like it was hard to reconcile. “I’ll take that as a no,” he said and sighed. “Maybe next time you can trust me to help.”

All right, so Angel was here and apparently they were in the middle of a fight. Insofar as wishes granted by dark objects went, that was a little on the tame side. Buffy released a breath. “I’d love it if you helped,” she said, taking a tentative step toward him. The scenery didn’t change—it was really him. “Maybe we can try again tomorrow?”

Angel stared at her, long enough that the warmth that had bubbled up inside began to fizzle.

“So now you want my help.” His tone was flat, almost accusatory. “It’s hard to keep up with you, you know?”

“I’m…sorry?”

“You’re sorry.” Another long beat, then he huffed and shook his head. “I think I prefer it when you’re screaming. At least that’s honest.”

Okay, the dark wish granter had apparently done more than stick them in a fight. The last of the warmth faded entirely, replaced by a more familiar rising sense of panic. Buffy stepped forward, raising a hand. “Angel, I don’t know what I said, but—”

He shot to his feet with such speed it sent a flurry of crumbs that had apparently collected on his belly to the floor, and a siren started going off in Buffy’s head. While Spike was an abnormal sort of vampire who enjoyed munching on solid foods—onion blossom, buffalo wings, whatever she had around the house—Angel had maintained the party line that vampires didn’t eat anything aside from blood. They certainly didn’t lounge around their girlfriend’s house, munching on chips and bingeing crappy television, either. Or maybe they did—she hadn’t ever actually asked Angel how he kept himself occupied when on his own. In her head, he’d devoted himself to tai chi or reading or…something. Hell, he hadn’t even owned a television when she’d known him before—not at the apartment and certainly not at the mansion. Part of her had assumed he was so old fashioned that he found bits of modernity like that abrasive or otherwise beneath him.

“I don’t have time for this,” Angel muttered as he stalked toward her—she thought, for a wild moment, to greet her with a kiss, but he veered to the left and sidestepped her for the staircase. “Poker night with the boys. I need to get ready.”

Buffy stared at the scattering of crumbs on the floor, dazed, then turned around. “Ah, okay,” she said, though it was certainly _not_ okay, but she couldn’t get into that right now. Not until she understood what it was exactly she’d walked into. “And Dawn?”

Angel paused halfway up the stairs, his back ramrod straight.

“I can only say I’m sorry so many times,” he muttered. “But you’re the one who said you didn’t need help.”

The sirens in her head hit a new decibel. “Angel, what—”

“I’m not having this fight now. You know I hate to be late.”

He was moving again before Buffy could find her voice. Instead, she stood there like an idiot, watching as he took the turn that would lead to her mother’s room—Willow and Tara’s room—with a sort of familiarity and inattention he’d never once displayed when in her home before.

She looked back to the living room and its mess—the crumbs, the bag of chips, the bottles on the coffee table. And what should have clicked right away finally did.

Angel lived here. They weren’t just together, they were cohabitating.

And Dawn. Something had happened to Dawn. Something this world’s Buffy had blamed on Angel.

Buffy didn’t realize she had torn up the stairs until she was on the landing, scrambling for her sister’s bedroom. She knew what she would find—or wouldn’t find—but needed to see it anyway because this was _not_ the way things were supposed to be. The paw had granted the Angel wish and while she couldn’t remember exactly the wording she’d used, one of her other wishes had been for Dawn—not worrying anymore about social services, not worrying because Dawn was home, surrounded by the people who loved her, the people she belonged with.

_She couldn’t be dead._

But she found Dawn’s room empty. Or not _empty_ empty, but close enough to matter. The bed was there, stripped of its linens, and other assorted pieces of furniture, including a dresser with one drawer hanging loose. The posters, though, and the lamps, and the collection of clothes and stuffed animals and books—none of it was here. This room was not lived in.

The panic from earlier hit a fever pitch. Buffy’s legs wobbled and her vision blurred, her skin flushing hot and cold at the same time, and everything inside her threatening to shatter. A sob wrangled itself free of her throat before she could stop it, and she stumbled back from the room and its offensive emptiness, slapping a hand over her mouth as hot tears began scaling down her cheeks.

There was a sigh from the direction of her mother’s room, and Angel was there, crowding the hall, crowding _her_ , and looking something more than annoyed.

“I’m not apologizing again,” he informed her in a cold, detached tone that made her hate him. Because this was not Angel. This was someone else—a stranger living in her home, wearing her old boyfriend’s face and regarding her with lazy contempt. Not caring that her sister was gone, not caring what that meant or how it hurt. Apparently, in order to make things work with Angel, Angel had to be a completely different person.

“What did you do to her?” Buffy demanded in a low voice she barely recognized as her own.

Angel sighed and rolled his eyes _again_ , tearing a hand through his hair. He’d dressed in a pair of sweats and a pullover, looking less like himself by the minute.

“For the last time,” he said, “I did what was best. What did you expect, Buffy? You were gone. I had no reason to think that it wouldn’t be forever, and Dawn needed more than an ex-vampire and a couple of witches to give her the life she deserves. What the hell do I know about raising a kid?”

Buffy wiped at her cheeks, confusion shoving aside the anger.

Wait, what?

“And it’s not like Dawn ever liked me to begin with,” Angel continued, and there was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice. “All this house had was bad memories and a guy she couldn’t stand. Was it the best move? I don’t know—obviously I wouldn’t have even considered it if Willow and the others had clued me in to what they were planning to do. All I could do was what seemed right at the time, and that seemed right. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” He heaved a sigh—a sort of _lost cause_ sigh—and plonked his way down the stairs. A second later, the front door slammed closed, blanketing Buffy in an uneasy quiet.

What the hell had happened here?

_Okay. Okay, think._

Angel lived here. _Really_ lived here. And apparently, they had moved into her mother’s room? Did that mean Willow and Tara didn’t live here?

Buffy forced her feet to move, though she wasn’t sure her brain was prepared for another shock. Except she didn’t have time to worry about that—she needed as much information as she could get about the world she’d landed in. So when she barreled over the threshold and into a room that she didn’t recognize, she didn’t allow herself more than a few seconds to take in the scenery. There was a messy, unmade bed and piles of clothes scattered across the floor. A dresser—her dresser? It looked strange in here—was pressed against the wall, dusty and cluttered with random receipts, change, and what looked to be a collection of jewelry. The nightstands on either side of the bed were both equipped with lamps and, unlike the dresser, relatively clear of debris, save the odd magazine or worn paperback. All in all, and unlike the scene down the hall, the room looked lived-in. Foreign, but lived-in. She saw enough of herself in the clothes spilling out of the dresser and the addition of Mr. Gordo on the right side of the bed to tell her this was where she slept. Apparently with Angel.

Buffy decided to rifle through Angel’s nightstand first. See if he had anything in there that might indicate what it was he’d done with Dawn. His little speech had given her some information, enough for Buffy to gather she had taken the swan dive in this world as well, and whatever had happened to Dawn had been a result of her hundred-and-forty-seven day absence. Angel feeling…what, overwhelmed with the responsibility of handling a teenager? That didn’t sound like the Angel she knew—but then this Angel was hardly the Angel she knew. And what had happened that her friends had just let Angel make that sort of decision—that _Giles_ would stand for it, when Giles knew that Dawn was Buffy’s line in the sand?

The first drawer of Angel’s nightstand yielded nothing useful—just more magazines that had ended up shoved inside rather than taken out with the rest of the trash. Buffy sighed and pushed the drawer back in, then moved to the bottom one.

And almost screamed at what she saw inside.

What in the world would Angel need a gun for? Had she known about this—this world’s Buffy? She was pretty sure her answer would have been a firm no, had he asked her about it. Dawn was clumsy enough without the added help of firearms in the house. Or maybe Angel had bought the gun after making whatever decision he’d made regarding Dawn. But again, why? What possible use could he have for it?

_Who is he?_

Buffy swallowed, pushed the drawer back, and rose slowly to her feet. That sense of imbalance, of _wrongness_ that had hit her at the Magic Box had been a steady companion ever since she’d noted the crumbs on the floor downstairs. The distant, disaffected way Angel talked to her, and how he’d all but bolted the second she’d come home.

Something was seriously wrong.

_Don’t stop. Keep looking._

She rounded the bed on legs that wouldn’t stop trembling, lowered herself to the floor and started rifling through the assorted junk that had accumulated on the top of her nightstand. There were a few more magazines, even a few issues she recognized. This Buffy’s subscription habits and hers weren’t totally at odds, which was both comforting and not. Evidence of how they were dissimilar could perhaps help her account for Angel being a totally different person, but there was nothing here that Buffy couldn’t see herself owning.

With a sigh, she opened the first drawer, and her heart leaped.

It was stuffed with paperwork—what looked to be a collection of report cards and letters from Dawn’s school. She fumbled over the first few pages, scanning the words faster than her brain could make sense of them, willing something profound to leap out at her. But the longer she looked, the more that initial rush of discovery began to wane, and she realized these were things she’d had from before. Nothing from the current semester, more a collection of literature the school had given her when they’d had their first serious heart-to-heart about Dawn’s wellbeing, and if she, Buffy, could really act as a caregiver when she was so young, herself.

Buffy sat back on her legs, her eyes stinging. It was almost worse than having found nothing at all. Her stomach twisted and her throat burned.

What the hell had she done?

_No. Keep looking. There has to be something._

She shoved in the topmost drawer and pulled the lower one out, half-fearing that she would discover another firearm. She didn’t. The lower drawer only had two things in it—a small, wooden keepsake box that she didn’t recognize, and underneath that, a framed photo. One of her and Angel, the captured image of a scene Buffy didn’t remember.

One Buffy didn’t understand.

She was in a white dress, veil and everything, and Angel was beside her—the Angel she remembered, not the caricature she’d met downstairs. Looking down at her with a beaming smile and warm, sparkling eyes, carefree and brimming with love.

And they were both standing under a bright, radiant sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said in numerous review responses, I LOVE how many of you thought Monkey Paw World would include Vampire!Buffy and (possibly) Vampire!Dawn. That would've been pretty damn dark. But ultimately, I think (maybe) you'll agree that the actual wish results are worse. Vampire!Buffy wouldn't care about consequences too much. Giving Buffy a world she has to navigate while caring about consequences? I think that'll be a rougher road for her.


	3. I juggle one-handed, do some magic tricks and the best imitation of myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to bewildered, Kimmie Winchester, Niamh, and Behind Blue Eyes for betaing!
> 
> Also, I forgot to note: all chapter titles are lyrics from Ben Folds songs. Or, at the least, songs Ben Folds has covered. We might get a straggler in there, but most were penned by him.

She hadn’t noticed the ring. How had she not noticed the ring?

Buffy sat on the floor in her mom’s— _hers and Angel’s_ —bedroom, gaze fixed on the glittering diamond winking up at her from her ring finger. It was pretty. Modest in size, but modesty was fine with her, especially given the amount of stress she must put it under on a nightly basis. The edges were sharp enough to certify the thing as a weapon in its own right. There would be no taking that puppy off before patrol. A good slayer seized every advantage.

The ring had been on her finger long enough to embed its impression in her skin, to feel so much like a part of her that she noticed its absence more than its presence when she removed it.

_Married._ The word sounded strange in her head. _Married_ was something other people were, something other people got to do. _Married_ was an adult concept. _Married_ wasn’t Buffy.

But she was. There was no doubt. If the ring wasn’t enough, there was the picture.

Buffy shifted her gaze from the ring to the framed photo of a wedding she didn’t remember. A wedding that had taken place on a day bursting with sunshine and featuring an Angel who could stand under its rays without fear. An Angel who was human.

He’d said something about that, she remembered. A throwaway line she’d been too preoccupied to focus on, overwhelmed as she had been with Dawn’s absence. But it came to her now as it should have then, so loud and abrasive her temples pounded. It was too much for her—all of it was too much. The deadened sensation she’d been determined to chase away, the physical ache that was her longing for Heaven, compounded now in a bombardment of information too tangled to begin to unravel. But it was still there, and being that this was her mess, she didn’t have the luxury of ignoring it.

_“Dawn needed more than an ex-vampire and a couple of witches to give her the life she deserves.”_

An ex-vampire. Angel was an ex-vampire. An ex-vampire she’d married, one who ate people food and left messes in the living room and had a freaking gun in his nightstand. An ex-vampire who had apparently done something so her sister wasn’t here anymore and they were fighting now, or had been, and Angel wasn’t sorry. He was off with others—poker night, he’d said—because that was a thing he did. Human, husband Angel had a poker night.

In the many, many times a younger Buffy had fantasized about Angel turning human, the future hadn’t looked even remotely like this. Granted, that Buffy hadn’t had a sister to worry about—even if she didn’t remember it that way—and couldn’t have conceived of a time when her mother wouldn’t be here to help her navigate life’s tougher choices, or that her friends would have viewed her death as a surmountable obstacle. No, in the head of teenage Buffy, Angel becoming human would solve all of her problems, because all of her problems had, at the time, revolved around the fact that he wasn’t human. The second she’d accepted her fate, embraced that being with Angel meant certain sacrifices, he’d left her to shatter, and that had also been because he was a vampire. A human Angel wouldn’t have a curse, wouldn’t be immortal, wouldn’t have anything standing in the way of being with Buffy the way she’d always dreamed.

Had all of that happened in this world?

Buffy released a shaky breath, forcing her gaze to the keepsake box—the other thing that she’d had squirreled away in the nightstand. She hadn’t opened it yet, knew she should—that she had to—but was afraid of what she might find inside.

Afraid of what else she might have done.

How had she worded her wishes? The wording was what mattered, wasn’t it? The wish involving Dawn had been centered on Buffy’s growing anxiety regarding social services. Whatever Angel had done had clearly removed social services from the picture. Or perhaps he’d handed her over, and Buffy didn’t need to worry about social services anymore because the fight was over and she’d lost. Only why in the world would Angel think Dawn was better off thrown into the foster system than with the people who loved her?

_Do they love her, though?_ None of her friends had been biologically altered to love her sister. All they had were years’ worth of false memories and perhaps some loyalty to Buffy herself to keep Dawn happy and healthy. Had it just been Giles who had suggested sacrificing Dawn was the only way to beat Glory? Had anyone else insisted that she wasn’t really Buffy’s sister?

She’d told Spike that she was counting on him to protect Dawn, knowing he would, above everyone else. Willow had been too focused on Tara and the larger role she had to play. Xander and Anya had been question marks, and even if they hadn’t they weren’t strong enough to stand between Dawn and a pissed-off hellgod. And Giles had made his feelings perfectly clear.

Spike wouldn’t have let anything happen to Dawn if he were here. If he loved her. Did that mean he wasn’t? That he didn’t?

Nothing in this world could be assumed. She needed more information, which meant looking in the damn box.

With shaking hands, Buffy lifted the keepsake box to eye-level. It was sturdier than the sort she’d had as a child, the wood smooth and cherry-red, curved where it needed to be curved and reinforced with brass hinges along the seams and lid. There was a brass lock as well—one she could easily break if she had a mind to, but something kept her from doing it. Buffy knew herself well enough to understand that she hadn’t placed the box and the framed photo in the bottom drawer just to get them out of the way. One was tied to the other, and if she felt the need to keep the box’s contents protected by lock and key, then busting it open was a very bad idea.

Probably.

Unless, of course, what was inside was tied to Dawn’s whereabouts, though somehow Buffy didn’t think so. But nothing was certain.

_Giles. I need Giles._

Yes, whatever was going on, Giles would be able to help. He had to.

Buffy swallowed and forced herself to move. Wedding day photo and keepsake box back in the nightstand—which, yes, she once again searched for sign of a key, but no dice. Not that this was all that surprising. If whatever this world’s Buffy had to hide was worth locking up, she wouldn’t be so dense as to keep the key within reach.

But that was something to worry about later. Right now, she had a watcher to find.

Hopefully, he would only yell a little.

* * * * *

She’d call it a side-effect of the hangover from Heaven, not knowing exactly where Giles was staying. The first place she checked was his old apartment on the off-chance that this world’s Giles hadn’t taken off after her death—which Buffy was still reasonably certain had happened, given Dawn’s not being there. However, she’d known before she’d set foot in the courtyard that it was no good. The windows were dark and the whole area had this vague, unlived-in feeling that gave her the wiggins.

In her world, Giles had spent the first couple nights he’d been back in town on her couch. Where he’d gone after that was anyone’s guess. He’d just said something about having made arrangements elsewhere. She’d never asked where the _else_ was.

Or had he told her? That seemed possible too. As much time as she spent inside her head these days, sometimes she missed whatever was happening outside of it.

Buffy thought about hitting Xander’s place, then wondered if it was still Xander’s. Or Willow and Tara, who were probably on campus if they weren’t staying at Revello Drive any longer, though tracking down their dorm would be something of a challenge. And there was Spike—maybe. She wasn’t sure she was brave enough to take a trek through Restfield only to find his crypt was empty. That might be the blow that broke the Buffy’s back, considering he’d been the only person who had helped her feel anywhere close to normal in her own damn world.

The Bronze seemed the safest option. And if the gang wasn’t there, well, she’d just have to suck it up and go on patrol. Do her best to pretend any of this was normal.

It wasn’t until she turned the corner to the Bronze and saw the familiar gathering of locals outside the front door that she realized that part of her had doubted it would still be here. The rest of the world was screwy, after all, but here stood the Bronze, unchanging as ever. The sign looked right, as did everything around it, including the dumpsters toward the end of the alley. Buffy released a long breath and forced herself to relax.

Things would make sense. She’d make them make sense.

The atmosphere inside was just as encouraging. Loud, abrasive music coming from the stage—check. Sea of writhing coeds simulating sex on the dance floor—check. Crack of balls at the pool table—check. Inability to hear one’s own thoughts above the bajillion conversations happening at once—check. Finally, a corner of Sunnydale that hadn’t changed at all. Whatever remaining tension Buffy had been carrying began to ease.

This was familiar. She could handle this.

“Buffy! Hey, Buffy!”

Buffy about melted with relief when the voice reached her ears. Hell, she thought she might cry. Sagging somewhat, she turned and plastered on an everything’s-okay smile just as Willow pushed her way through the sea of patrons and came up beside her.

“Will! God, I am so glad to see you, you have no idea.”

Willow blinked, her lips tugging into a confused but pleased grin. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Was that weird? She guessed it would be if she’d said it in her world, egg-shell walking as she had been ever since clawing her way to freedom. Buffy furrowed her brow and shook her head. “Sorry. It’s been a strange day all around. I’m a little loopy up top.”

“I’m guessing you had no luck at the Magic Box.”

“Luck?”

“You know, finding it?” Willow’s smile melted and she tossed a glance over her shoulder before leaning in, almost conspiratorially. “If you didn’t, I wouldn’t mention anything about the shop if I were you. She’s…well, she’s being Anya. Which, take that as you will.”

Buffy nodded as though she understood, though already her brain was beginning to spin again. Of course, her first instinct was to ask Willow to identify the _it_ , but as off-balance as she was, she knew that would sound weird and she wasn’t quite ready to let everyone know she wasn’t their Buffy. Not without talking to Giles first, at least.

“Come on,” Willow said, tugging on Buffy’s wrist and pulling her back toward the high-top tables. “It won’t be that bad. If she starts being Mega Anya, just give me or Tara the signal and we’ll rescue you.”

Again, Buffy nodded as though any of that made sense, willing the new barrage of questions shooting through her head to slow the hell down so she could gather her bearings. Anya wasn’t someone Buffy worried about on most days, so the thought that she might need rescuing was a bit extreme. Unless Willow was talking in code, like they had when Xander had first started bringing Anya to everything. Willow’s patience for the former-demon had been on the non-existent side, so anytime she’d needed a break, she’d ask Buffy if she had any aspirin. Not very subtle, but neither Xander nor Anya had ever caught on.

No telling if that tactic would work now, but if she needed an escape, Buffy would roll it out.

“She’s still mad, huh?” Buffy asked on the off-chance her friend would drop a hint she could work with.

Willow threw her a look. “Uhh, yeah. Yeah, I think it’s gonna take a while for her to put this behind her. And I know it’s not your fault, but I get it. Even if it is totally unfair to take it out on you, with Giles being…” She let out a shaky breath. “Anyway, just…give her time and try to avoid punching her face off.”

Buffy’s heart performed a jumping jack. “Giles being—”

“Not now.”

Not now what? What the hell did that mean?

But she didn’t have time to ask, because they were approaching the table and she had to be this world’s Buffy. This world’s Buffy, who already knew what they weren’t going to talk about now and didn’t need any reminders.

God, the sooner she found Giles, the better.

Given how everything else had gone since she’d opened her eyes in this world, Buffy had no idea what to expect when they reached the table. Anya’s temper tantrums, in her experience, tended to be somewhat superficial, though she was loyal to the store. A store that was incredibly closed at the moment for reasons no one was considerate enough to just spill. The bits and pieces she’d gathered so far made sense, she could see they belonged to the same picture, but where the connections met was another thing altogether.

The scene that greeted her, though, hit her much like seeing the Bronze had. Xander, Anya, and Tara circled around their table—Tara with her customary friendly smile, Xander’s eyes lighting up and Anya… Well, Anya apparently making sport of stabbing the ice in her drink with her straw, and very intent upon it. Becoming more intent, in fact, the second Xander bellowed out his welcome.

“Buffy! You made it!” Xander greeted with an enthusiastic wave. He seemed to be doing that thing where he pretended Anya was invisible in the hope of ignoring away the tension. “I was beginning to think you were a dream we all had.”

Buffy arched an eyebrow and tried for a grin.

“You know,” he continued a second later after a forced laugh, sliding off his stool as though to run interference. “’Cause it’s been so long since we’ve seen you. I take it Angel had a thing tonight.”

She didn’t have time to reflect on how weird it was to hear him asking about Angel without scowling or rolling his eyes. Asking about him _at all_ , in fact. But she didn’t have time to dwell on it, for Xander took her in an awkward one-armed hug and angled his mouth close to her ear to murmur, “Just remember that I have to live with her, so please don’t bring up the shop, okay?”

Buffy forced herself to nod once more, her skin feeling tighter by the second and the pressure in her temples resuming the harsh cadence that had been there before she’d left the house.

“For the record, though,” Xander continued, “I know it’s not your fault—we all do—and I am _very_ glad to see you.” Then, clearing his throat, he practically shouted, “So where is Angel?”

“Umm, poker night,” Buffy said.

“Ahh, poker night with the guys.” He released a sigh and helped himself back onto his barstool. “Well, good. Sounds like he’s getting back into the groove.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that, but a nod seemed innocuous enough. “Yeah,” she agreed, sliding onto a barstool beside Tara. “Grooves are…important.”

“Any luck tracking down the Dawnster?”

At the mention of her sister, Buffy gripped the table so hard she felt the metal give. _Tracking down?_ So Dawn was somewhere else—somewhere not Sunnydale. While she’d already surmised as much, hearing it confirmed, even somewhat airily, had every bit of her on alert. “What was the last I told you?” she asked. “It’s…hard to keep up.”

“Uhh, I think the last thing you told us was you were going to murder Angel and make it look like an accident,” Willow said, climbing onto the vacant seat on Tara’s other side. “Buffy, we haven’t seen you since the funeral.”

She gripped the table again, this time to hold herself steady as everything else threatened to tip on its side. The question was there, bubbling in her throat— _whose funeral?_ —but she managed to swallow it back. This was the only piece of control she had over herself, everything else spiraling madly out of it. At once her skin felt feverish, her heart thudding so hard her ribs might crack, the noise in her head reaching a piercing octave that robbed her of her equilibrium. Her body seemed to be in complete meltdown mode, tears swelling and stomach roiling and lungs seizing all at once, and somehow in competition with each other.

Her body knew even if her mind rejected it. Her body knew whose funeral it had been.

“Right,” Buffy managed to wheeze out, blinking eyes that were suddenly overfull. That Willow responded by giving her a watery smile and grabbing her hand only made things worse. Made her understand that she was right—that thing she didn’t want to think, didn’t want to know, but did anyway. “I—umm. Well, Angel’s still… He said that he thought it was for the best. Dawn. That he wasn’t equipped to raise her.”

“Yeah, we know that part,” Xander said, and now he sounded more like himself. More like the guy who had been hating on Angel since well before Angel had given them all a reason. “Still think it was a load of you-know-what, but hey.”

“Xander,” Willow snapped as though he had spoken out of turn.

“What? Is it a secret?” he shot back, eyebrows raised. “I know they didn’t get along, but come on. He’s the one with two centuries of experience. Call me crazy, but I think that made him the grownup of the relationship. And he knew we’d all be against it, otherwise he would’ve told us about it rather than just ship her off to Daddy Dearest.”

_Dad?_ Buffy forced her teeth hard enough into her lower lip that the coppery taste of blood flooded her mouth. Her father. That was where Angel had sent Dawn. To the guy who had fooled around behind their mother’s back and hadn’t even had the decency to stop by after the funeral to see how his daughters were managing living in a world without her. The guy who had been more or less absent from both of their lives ever since the divorce, save for the random phone call, which was typically a formality to canceling any plans they might have been optimistic enough to make. Aside from the summer between her sophomore and junior years, Buffy hadn’t spent more than two hours in her father’s company since moving to Sunnydale.

Had her father attended _her_ funeral, or had he been too busy that day?

“I mean, not that he hasn’t built up a bunch of goodwill over the years,” Xander went on. “Except, wait, he hasn’t. And anyone who knows and loves Buffy should know that no one is better equipped to handle Dawn than the Scoobies, so no, I still don’t get why it’s even necessary to have this conversation, as she never should have left home in the first place.”

“What do you think should have been done, Xander?” Anya practically exploded, rolling her eyes and throwing her hands in the air. “I, for one, did not want to be a newlywed with a fifteen-year-old. Willow and Tara are still in school and Giles got on the first plane to England with no intention of coming back. Would you have preferred Angel remain her guardian, with his history of stalking and seducing fifteen-year-olds?”

“Hey!” Buffy said reflexively, though now that the horrible thought had been voiced, she couldn’t unhear it. Hell, it had never occurred to her, really, that Dawn was the same age she’d been when Angel had first stepped out of the shadows and into her life. Only then, fifteen had seemed much older than it did now, and for her it had been, given all she’d shouldered. But the thought remained, firm and sticky, and she didn’t like it.

Angel had told her once that he’d seen her before she’d been called, that she’d been bright and beautiful and in the sunlight—though he’d never mentioned how he’d managed that part. He’d seen her and known her heart, and he’d loved her for everything she was separated from the Slayer. And at the time, that had been all kinds of swoony and romantic, the idea that her great love had loved her even before he’d known her. But the girl she’d been then wasn’t too far removed from the girl Dawn was now, only more naïve and less prepared. A child in every sense of the word.

“Wait,” Buffy muttered, something else piercing through the fog. She looked up, meeting Xander’s eyes. “Newlywed?”

Anya sniffed. “Figures you wouldn’t remember.”

“Ahn, please,” Xander said, covering his apparent wife’s hand with his own and giving it a squeeze. “We made that announcement at Giles’s funeral and we’ve hardly seen Buffy since. So it’s not exactly like—”

There it was. The thing her body had known was true, even as the rest of her had refused to believe it. And Buffy disconnected—from herself, the conversation, her mind altogether. There was only so much the brain could take before it cried uncle, and hers was beyond crying.

She’d known better. Goddammit, she’d known better. Any other time, any other place, any other stretch of twenty minutes and she never would have done it. Dark magic had a price and that thing, that paw, had been darker than dark. So dark Giles had sought it out just to destroy it, and somehow she’d managed to talk herself into using it. The endless loop she’d been trapped inside had been a handy stage, the exact right set of circumstances to wheedle her resolve down to pretty much nothing, dangle the carrot in front of her long enough to make herself believe any out was better than living her life eternally in the walk from the shop proper to the dim, occult paraphernalia-stuffed basement. Somehow in between trips up the stairs to the cash-wrap, Buffy had forgotten a universal truth—that no matter how bad things were, they could always get worse.

Or perhaps she hadn’t trusted that _worse_ existed in a world where she had been torn from paradise. Where just opening her eyes in the morning took energy she didn’t have, where she struggled to feel anything but the vacant numbness that her life had become. Any world, any reality, any version of living had to have been better, because if it wasn’t, then why even try?

She’d fooled herself into believing a lie. Worse, she’d known it was a lie from the start. She’d just chosen to ignore it.

The resulting mess was hers, and all its casualties. Dawn was gone. Giles was dead. Angel was some shadow of his former self. All of it was on her.

“I need a minute,” Buffy blurted, and slid off the stool without awaiting a response. “I’ll… I’ll be right back.”

She had no idea whether or not she would, in fact, be back. Going back meant hearing more, and hearing meant knowing, and she wasn’t sure she could handle that. The sensation of the air against her skin was stifling enough at the moment—thick and heavy with smoke and sweat and voices of people screaming over music, not knowing that this world only existed because she had wished it so.

Buffy stumbled first toward the door, her feet apparently ahead of her brain, then swerved wildly in the direction of the restrooms when it became clear the path to the exit wouldn’t be an easy one. The Bronze being the only outlet in town for, well, anyone meant that some nights, it was packed to bursting. This was one of those nights—of course it was. If she was going to have a breakdown, best ensure half of Sunnydale had the privilege of a front-row seat.

She’d go into the girl’s room. Splash some water on her face, like they did in movies and see if that helped at all. Seemed unlikely but she was willing to try anything at this point. All she needed was the fortitude to get through the rest of the evening without arousing Willow or Xander’s suspicions because how did one exactly confess something like this?

“ _Sorry, the world used to suck only half as much. So, all this? You have me to thank for that.”_

There would be questions and yelling and so much confusion and she would have no answers. None. If asked to reconstruct the line of thinking that had led to the moment where she’d decided to use the monkey’s paw, she was almost certain she couldn’t. Just that, for a blip of an instant, things had been crystal clear.

Buffy stuttered to a stop halfway down the hall, her heart ratcheting up its hammering as the weight of everything came down on her again. The combination of things in the air making it difficult to convince herself that her lungs were working, and that difficulty lighting the same panic inside her that she’d experienced the night she’d awakened in her coffin. Gasping, cloying, knowing that breathable oxygen was just close enough to taste if she could just get there in time, not wanting it but needing it all the same.

A door opened. A hand wrapped around her wrist, then the floor was moving. Buffy stumbled against something cool and firm, solid when everything else around her was not. Then the door closed, blanketing her in the comforting dark, and she gulped down air so fast her chest whined in protest.

“It’s all right, pet,” he said, and pressed a cool kiss against her brow. “It’s all right now. Spike’s here.”

And before she could find her footing, he cupped the back of her head and swallowed her mouth with his.


	4. Or I could just keep on moving on, moving on, moving on, moving on and not stop 'til I get to normal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to bewildered, Kimmie Winchester, Niamh, and Behind Blue Eyes for their help whipping this chapter into shape.
> 
> As next Friday is Christmas, it'll be two weeks before the next update. But hopefully, I'll have a few chapters in reserve by then, which will make me happy. Plus, I plan to post the final chapter and epilogue of Until Then as well as my Secret Santa fic next week, and I don't want to abuse my poor betas by overwhelming them with more stuff to get through before the holiday.

It happened again.

It always happened around Spike.

The world tumbling, her life in ruins, the parts of her not in motion grabbing and seizing and hoping to find something sturdy enough to take her at her strongest but supportive enough to hold her at her weakest. Sound and fury and more than that pounding against her temples and beating against her skin until she was a walking bruise, and nothing made it better. Nothing at all, except those moments she stole away with him.

It shouldn’t be like this—not in her world or in this one. That Spike was in love with her was one of those things she knew, a thing she accepted, and toward what should have been the end of her life, she had felt…something. She hadn’t known what it was, had hardly had any time to analyze it and, if she were being honest with herself, she’d more or less figured that she never would. Death was her art, after all, and they had been racing toward the showing. While she hadn’t gone into the final battle consciously knowing it would be her final one, she also _had_. And dead women didn’t need to scrutinize the confusing not-hate feelings they had for vampires. Dead women got to rest.

But Buffy wasn’t dead anymore. She wasn’t quite alive, either. And those feelings she’d had for Spike before she’d jumped had pulled her to him ever since the night she’d walked down the stairs. Since she’d realized that the pain that came with living wasn’t as intense around him as it was around the others, because with him, part of her could remain dead.

The rest of her, he managed to bring to life.

And here he was, doing it again. Only now with deep, nicotine-flavored kisses that somehow ignited her like nothing ever had. The way his lips felt, touched and pulled, how he nipped and sipped and tugged and drank her in as though she were the thing standing between him and dust. This was wrong, she knew, for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was this world’s Buffy was a married woman. Married to _Angel_ , the guy who would always be the one. But the thought of pulling back had her head pounding all over again, the panic she’d just barely managed to dodge beginning its ascent, whispering things it would soon scream.

This wasn’t her world. This wasn’t her reality. This wasn’t her life.

So she crumbled, she gave in. Spike pushed his tongue into her mouth and she pushed back, feeding him everything he was giving her and more. Nothing else was right and she was tired of fighting it. She trembled when he moaned into her, when he rolled his hips so that she could feel him, long and hard against her belly, sending anticipatory tingles down her spine and across her skin. Tingles that bloomed into something beyond plain warmth—something that felt so damn good she could freaking cry. Hell, she might, the way this was going.

“Oh, my sweet little Slayer,” Spike mumbled against her lips, pulling back so that she could gulp down a breath. Kind of him, since she had forgotten. “Why didn’t you come this way sooner? Coulda had you to heaven and back a few times by now. Or as close as we can get you these days.”

The words both stung and didn’t. She didn’t have time to think on that, either, for Spike lowered his mouth to her neck and began to nibble, scaling a hand down her arm until his fingers were dancing along the waistband of her jeans.

“How do you want me tonight?” he murmured against her throbbing pulse. “Want it to hurt a little?”

Why not? Everything else hurt.

“Or do you need remindin’?”

Buffy blinked, dragging in breaths that tasted of him. The cigarettes he’d smoked earlier, a hint of whatever burning alcohol he’d poured down his throat, leather and spice and everything nice. That was one thing she’d noticed plenty since she’d been back from the dead—just how amazing Spike smelled, when he had no right to. How he made death seem like living, or at least the sort of living she could stand.

“Reminding?” she asked when she convinced her voice to work. “Of what?”

He nipped at her pulse point, making her jolt and whimper and press her thighs together all at once, the chorus of _wrong_ still ringing in her head, but even fainter than it had been before.

“That you’re mine.” He unbuttoned her jeans and dragged the zipper down. “Much as I am yours.”

She both wanted to ask and she didn’t—more that she didn’t, because _reminding_ was the last thing she thought she could stand at the moment. Whatever else was normal in this world, for this Buffy and this Spike. She wanted to forget, and Spike was good at that—helping her forget. Forget Heaven, forget the pain that came with dragging in breath, forget the worries stacked up at home and the friends she couldn’t trust. Forget, forget, forget, and never remember ever, if she could help it.

Spike seemed to take her silence as acquiescence, for he pulled another kiss from her lips—and _god_ , the way he kissed was something else—before he flashed her a grin she somehow managed to see in the dark and began a quick descent down her body, touching and stroking and nibbling in ways that let her know, as nothing else had, that he knew all her weak spots. Where, exactly, to apply pressure on her throat, just the right amount of attention to pay her breasts, that her nipples were often too sensitive but sometimes that was part of the fun. And when he sank to his knees and pulled one of her legs free of her jeans, he knew not to dive right in and attack her clit. Instead, he hiked her leg over his shoulder, pressed his face to her center and breathed her in. Slowly, as though savoring what he found there.

“Slayer mine,” Spike said. “Always.” Then he favored her exposed flesh with a long, soft lick that had her trembling from head to toe and back again.

“Oh, damn,” Buffy heard herself gasp, threading her fingers through his hair and tugging him closer. He chuckled into her, and that felt good too, little vibrations edging across her skin and through her in ways she’d never experienced. “Oh…”

“Never get tired of how you taste,” he murmured into her flesh before licking her again, then again, and again, each time with just a smidge more pressure than before. “The sounds you make for me.”

Buffy threw her head back hard enough that it smacked into the wall at her back, but if there was any pain she didn’t feel it. Didn’t feel anything except Spike lapping at her with increasing urgency, doing things with his tongue that would have had a more self-conscious Buffy feeling exposed and vulnerable as she never had been, but this Buffy—the one without a world—couldn’t find it in herself to care. Spike spreading her pussy open, sucking along her flesh, dipping his tongue into her and groaning as though he were the one being treated. Heat danced along her skin, lighting her from the inside out and chasing away that terrible, numbing cold. And the more she took, the more he gave. Fucking her first with his tongue, then sliding two wet fingers into her pussy and moaning when she clenched and bucked against him. He seemed content to watch her for a moment, breathing harder when she did, whimpering when she did, and by the time he finally turned his attention to her clit, she was throbbing and pulsing with need she’d never experienced before.

“There she is,” Spike whispered into her flesh. “That’s it, baby, give it to me. Let me feel you come.”

He swirled his tongue around her clit once, twice, then closed his mouth around it and sucked. And it shouldn’t have been that easy, but it was, and Buffy shuddered and clenched around his fingers as her body tumbled headfirst into pure ecstasy. Orgasms in the past had been something she experienced with no small amount of focus and concentration, but this one was effortless and all the stronger for it. She gasped and thrashed and thrust herself against his face, needing more but somehow also knowing more would have her ruined. And Spike seemed to anticipate this as well, for he growled again and kept his fingers pumping into her, curling and stroking from the inside as he pressed his tongue down against her clit and let her ride out the shudders.

Then he was on his feet, his mouth hovering above hers, and the slick head of his cock danced a line between her folds.

“God, I love you,” he said, hiking her into his arms and notching himself at her entrance. “Love you so much.”

She felt like crying again, her eyes stinging once more, and she didn’t know why. Only she did know why and that was worse. It was the way he said it, the way his voice shook around the words, how much he felt and how much of himself he poured into telling her, into something that seemed so far away from her at the moment she’d begun to doubt its existence. But it wasn’t far away—it was here, right here. Spike pushing inside of her with a soft, sweet moan and tugging her down for a kiss. Kissing her still when he began pumping into her with deep strokes that chased down the last sparks of her orgasm and lit them up once more. Kissing her like he couldn’t get enough of her mouth, like he needed her the way he needed blood.

It was wrong— _this_ was wrong on multiple counts. But so was everything else.

Buffy wrapped her arms around his neck, curled her naked leg around his waist and leveraged her own strength to drive him into her at a pace that soon had her slammed between the hard wall at her back and the hard wall that was his chest. She felt leather dance along the inside of her thigh, followed by the scrape of denim and the metallic _thwap_ of his belt buckle as he pounded into her, stretching her, filling her, over and over again. Again, he was the considerate one, remembering she needed to breathe, and pulled back so she could fill her lungs, his own grunts cadencing against her ears. He nipped and licked along her neck, again with the sort of expertise that told her they had done this a thousand times before. Knew just where to use his teeth and where she preferred tongue, where to suck and how much pressure to use. When he dipped his head to tease her breasts, it was with playful half-bites that charged through her as both too much and not enough—a balance no one had struck before.

“That’s it, baby,” Spike muttered, kissing his way up her collarbone and back to her mouth. “Squeeze me like that. Make it hurt.”

Then he had one arm banded around her waist to keep her where he wanted her as his left hand wandered between them, slipped over the mound of her pussy and danced close to her clit. When she gasped, he flashed her a grin—that patented, smug-Spike grin that had driven her crazy for going on four years—and tugged on her lower lip with his teeth.

“Do it, Slayer. Come all over my cock. Let me know whose girl you are.”

And before she could register what was happening, the blue of his eyes went yellow and he tore open the front of her blouse. A jolt of panic speared through her veins a second ahead of his fangs descending, and she didn’t have time to stop—to shove him off—because he pressed down on her clit and bit into the upward slope of her breast, and everything in her went supernova. At once, she felt both more in tune with her body than she ever had been and ejected from it, the overload too much, frying her brain and taking the rest of her along with it. And for a second there, for a flash of an instant, Buffy touched pure bliss. Something completely divorced from the mess she’d left behind or the one staring her down. The strange world she’d landed inside didn’t matter for that second, nor did whatever remained of the hopeful excitement she’d let herself believe in. All that mattered was this moment in which she was both dead and somehow more alive than she had ever been. With a vampire pulling her blood into his mouth, snarling his satisfaction around her torn flesh and pumping his hips once, twice more before his cock pulsed and she felt him spill inside of her.

It seemed like a long time passed before he spoke, but it was probably only seconds. Spike pulled his fangs back and favored the bite with a long lick, one that had her trembling with renewed need fast enough to give her whiplash. As though his tongue had feathered across her clit instead, and that must have been the intention, for he chuckled once more and kissed his way up her throat.

“How much longer until you can sneak off?” he asked, pulling back enough that his cock slipped out of her. That shouldn’t have made her whimper, but it did—shouldn’t have made her want to drag him back to her, but it did. The already-wrong world was even wronger than she’d thought—she was bleeding from where his fangs had pierced her and semen was trickling down her inner thighs, and she wanted more of it. More of whatever that had been and especially that moment of utter bliss where she had been separated at last from everything that she was supposed to care about—everything that had been waiting for her when she crashed back to earth. Spike had been giving that to her in increments since she’d clawed her way to freedom, allowing brief windows of escape from the horror show that was her life, and that had been _good_ , but this was so much better. That numb place she seemed to have made her home had burned away for a few glorious seconds. Forget the wishes, forget Angel, forget everything else—she needed more of _that_.

Buffy stumbled back, her eyes filling as her legs strained to keep her upright. Only this was wrong. Everything that had just happened was wrong.

He sensed the change in her—of course he did. The next second, he had her face cradled against his palm, his eyes, wide with concern, searching hers. “What is it, love?” he asked. “Talk to me.”

For a second, she was terrified she would do just that—open her mouth and let everything spill. The world being wrong, the horrible mistake she’d made, the unfathomable grief threatening to burst at any moment, the confusion and fury at what she had waiting for her at home, disgust with herself for what she’d done here. But then he would know, wouldn’t he? This Spike was just like her Spike, and he would see what her friends didn’t see. What not even Angel could see. All the parts of her stripped down.

The first thing that managed to climb above the tangle of thoughts that comprised her mind, though, was also the easiest. Something Spike would understand, even if he couldn’t understand the rest.

“I’m with Angel,” she choked out.

His brow furrowed, something like annoyance flashing across his eyes. “Lemme guess,” he muttered in what sounded like, of all things, a pout. “His poker mates decided they can’t bloody stand him, either? Told you it was just a matter of time before they gave him the old heave-ho.”

Buffy blinked, her brain again stuttering to come up with a response. It was no good—there was nothing she could say. Nothing this world’s Spike wouldn’t already know. This world’s Spike, with whom apparently she was having an affair. Who pulled her into maintenance closets and did things to her that she’d never entertained doing with anyone else, and probably a lot more if the way he was looking at her was any indication.

It was there again, pressing at the edges of her mind, the weight of the things she’d learned and the horror at all the things yet to discover. It was there and it wasn’t alone, because underscoring everything was the unshakeable knowledge that the world she saw now was something she had created. A place where Giles was dead and Dawn was gone and Angel was here but not. Where Angel was _human_ and they were married but she ran around on him, the way her father had run around on her mother.

God, she had to get out of there. _Now_.

“Let me go,” Buffy said, pushing at Spike’s chest, which was so much firmer than it had any right being.

He frowned, the annoyance that had been there at the mention of Angel slipping away in favor of concern. He dipped his head to catch her eye, his hand going to her face. “What’s the matter?” he asked, trying to get her to look at him. She couldn’t. “Slayer, tell me what’s wrong.”

“Let me _go_.”

“Can’t fix it if you won’t talk to me.”

“I don’t need you to _fix_ anything, Spike,” Buffy snapped, shoving him again, this time with enough force to send him back against the opposing wall. “I need you to stay away from me.”

She didn’t look at him as she rushed past. Couldn’t. Whatever she’d see there would be reserved for someone else. A Buffy she wasn’t and didn’t want to be.

A Buffy whose life was even more messed up than the one she’d left behind.

Buffy pushed her way through the crowd at the Bronze, not even sparing a glance in the direction of the table she’d abandoned. The very air seemed to press down upon her, making it hard to move, harder to breathe, as though she were fighting her way through jello. By the time she toppled back outside, her heart was thundering hard enough her ribs hurt, and her lungs burned the way they still sometimes did when she recalled drowning.

But she couldn’t stand still. While her friends might not come after her, Spike absolutely would. That was just the way he was. Tell him to drop something and he’d only hunt it down with more conviction. That he was involved with this world’s Buffy meant she had seconds at best to put some distance between herself and the Bronze. If only her stupid brain could figure out where to go.

Stupid, stupid brain and its stupid twist of stupid logic. Buffy forced her legs forward, not sure where she was going but needing to move. If she kept moving, maybe something brilliant would occur to her. Maybe she would just know. That had been how she’d made it this far, after all. Putting one foot in front of the other, taking in breaths, surviving one endless moment after another, living from sunrise to sunset and hoping, eventually, she would be glad to open her eyes. Hoping, eventually, she would not wish they would remain closed forever.

The hardest thing in this world was living in it—she’d said that to Dawn, before. Right before. And at the time it had seemed wise and insightful. The world was a bitch, after all, and the last few years in Sunnydale had been an amalgamation of gut-punches to her personal life interspersed between thwarting attempts of global extinction. Dying the first time had been hard enough to come back from, knowing how tenuous that balance was between this world and the next, knowing how close she’d come to having the rest of her admittedly few years ripped out from under her. It had taken three months and some change to shake loose the malaise that had followed her out of the Master’s lair, just in time for life to kick her again with everything that had happened with Angel. And that she had survived, thinking somewhat naively that things couldn’t possibly get worse because the worst had already happened.

Killing Angel had nothing on the way she’d felt, though, when he’d walked away from her. And _that_ feeling, as much as it had hurt at the time, had been a trip to the freaking zoo compared to everything that had come after finding her mother dead on the couch. But by then, the end had been in sight—an end Buffy hadn’t consciously prepared for but had known was there all the same. And that time when she said it couldn’t get worse, she’d been right. She _should_ have been right. Death was the absence of feeling—at least the sort of feelings that kept her tied to the ground, unable to move forward. Barely able to move at all. At last, she’d let go of pain—not just slayer pain, but all pain—and fulfilled what had always been the end of her story.

Now she could barely remember Heaven. Each day it seemed more and more like a really good, really bittersweet dream. Feeling that good. Feeling that happy. Feeling warm and loved and _okay_ —all things she hadn’t been since before she could remember. All things she wasn’t certain she’d ever been, as even the good times she could remember had been bookended, if not completely overshadowed, by personal tragedy.

It had been dumb to think wishing things better would actually work. A thing Buffy from before, Buffy who hadn’t known peace and warmth and completion, would never have tried. The stakes had been too high. Back then, she’d thought, felt, and experienced things as a person who had something to lose. Somehow in the midst of being ripped away from paradise, that sense of self-preservation, of overall good, of ownership and accountability had dulled. Or perhaps it hadn’t come back with her. Perhaps she’d left it in her coffin, with the rest of the pieces that made her Buffy Summers.

Tomorrow, she decided, she would go back to the Magic Box and see if she could find the damn monkey’s paw. Giles had bought it in order to destroy it—that much had stuck with her. Maybe destroying it would be like destroying Anya’s thingamabob amulet or whatever from a thousand years ago—that was the way she’d lost her demon powers, right? Granted, destroying the paw would likely be a chore in itself, otherwise the paw would have been all with the destroyed well before Buffy could have mistaken it for a mummy hand.

Maybe Angel would know something. Her heart leaped at the thought. Once upon a time, she’d gone to Angel for help in matters like these. He’d been around—he knew things. Even things Giles didn’t know. Sometimes.

Buffy sucked in a breath and picked up her pace. And even if he didn’t know anything, there was definitely something _she_ needed to know. Something she doubted she’d be able to reconcile on her own.

How things had gone so badly in their marriage that she’d ever consider having an affair with anyone, let alone Spike.

Except the way Spike had touched her, stroked her, kissed her… She was pretty sure she’d never experienced that before. With anyone. It had been so easy, too, to let him take her away. To give in. To shut out everything and everyone and surrender. Those moments he’d been inside of her had chased away the cold and the numb, even the shock of the things she’d learned. She’d been someone else then, a someone who could possibly be happy if the life she came back to belonged to anyone other than Buffy Summers.

A shiver ran down her spine and she pressed her thighs together, trembling.

Those were thoughts she was better off not thinking.

* * * * *

Angel still wasn’t back when Buffy arrived. She didn’t know what to make of that. Poker night with the guys—whoever this human-version of Angel’s _guys_ were—sounded like something that could go late. Well, if she were being honest with herself, it sounded like an excuse to get away from the house for a few hours. The sort of thing her father might have told her mother once upon a time before their marriage had officially fallen apart. She could be wrong, but given that this world’s Buffy wasn’t the faithful sort, she somehow doubted it.

The house at least looked a little less like a funhouse-mirror version of the one she called home when she walked back through the door. The subtle differences didn’t throw her off course, though she did wrinkle her nose when she found evidence of Angel’s snackathon still scattered across the living room floor. Okay, first things first, treat her mother’s house with the care it deserved. Hopefully this world’s Buffy left her broom and pan where she did.

Once the mess was cleaned up, and the living room more or less righted to the way it should look—though laden with knickknacks and doodads she didn’t recognize—she turned her attention to the desk where her mother had always sat to balance her checkbook and write out the month’s expenses. The one where Anya had sat not too long ago and advised her to start charging for slaying. That seemed like a likely place to stash important documents.

At the top of a stack of documents in the upmost drawer was a newspaper clipping, one bearing Giles’s face. Buffy’s heart seized and she crashed against the chair with a hard _thud,_ gripping the loose piece of paper and pulling it out.

_Rupert Edmund Giles_

_February 26, 1954 – October 13, 2001_

_One-time Sunnydale resident Rupert Giles was named as one of the victims of the deadly crash of UA Flight 31. Though born in England, Rupert spent many years in Sunnydale, and served as the high school’s librarian in its final years. He is fondly remembered by many students and will be laid to rest in Sunnydale Cemetery on October 20, following a brief service held at the graveside at 2:00._

Buffy didn’t realize she was crying until a droplet splattered across Giles’s photo, making his eyes almost cartoonishly large. That moment when Giles had walked through the door, the first time she’d seen him since being forced to live again, had been an adrenaline shot to the soul. Or as close as she thought she might get these days. Just knowing he was near had made her world feel more manageable, even if there were things he could never know. Things she couldn’t share.

He’d been killed in an airline crash. Because of her. He’d been coming back to see her, see her freshly resurrected and alive. The dates aligned with haunting significance. Buffy pressed her eyes closed, her skin heating and her sinuses burning, and she couldn’t lose it. Not now. There was still so much to do. To look through. She needed answers.

But Giles was gone, and Angel wasn’t here, and she had no idea when he’d get back. If he’d be open to talking to her at all after the way he’d spoken to her before. If there was any of the man she’d known still inside the guy apparently sharing her space now.

At once, Buffy was tired. Exhausted, actually. Too much so to continue looking for she-didn’t-know-what, all the things left unanswered swirling in her head, swirling, swirling, until the floor seemed to swirl too. In a life full of incredibly long days, this one had been the longest, and pushing forward was no longer an option. Except she had to push, didn’t she? This was the world she’d made and she had to face it—had to fix it. Had to find Dawn or a way to put things right. She had to, _had to_ , but she couldn’t keep her eyes open.

Buffy stood and managed to stagger toward the couch, where she collapsed without ceremony. The cushions didn’t smell right—smelled like stale beer. Add that to the list of things this reality had gotten wrong.

Her mother had once told her that things always seemed worse at night than they did in the morning, particularly if one was bone tired. It seemed like a long shot, but one worth taking.

And she was here for when Angel came home. He’d see her on the couch and they would talk.

If this world’s Buffy was anything like her, Angel would be used to her not sleeping through until morning. Thus far, her nights had been plagued with dreams of waking up in her coffin, her lungs filling with dirt, the world so far away. She considered herself lucky if she only woke four or five times. Even luckier if the thing that pulled her out of sleep wasn’t a nightmare, but something in the real world that would keep her nice and distracted from the place she’d just left.

She wondered if the grave was waiting for her again tonight.

And somewhat hoped it was.


	5. Being poor was not such a drag in hindsight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to bewildered, Kimmie Winchester, Niamh, and Behind Blue Eyes for their help getting these chapters into shape.
> 
> So as I've been writing these last few weeks, I've discovered that there are stories within the monkey's paw universe I want to tell, featuring AU Buffy. All will be short, most likely, and spoilery only for this story. But that meant I needed a series name so people could find them. None of the names I came up with were any good, so I took it to my fellow EF writers for help. I want to thank MissLuci for the suggestion I landed on. There were SO MANY good suggestions (several from OffYourBird, who is brilliant in all things, as we know) but Paraverse stuck with me. Para as meaning resembling/alongside. I think the reason for choosing that one over some of the also-brilliant alternatives will make itself known as the story goes on. It already makes sense to me, at least!

It was the crash that did it, jarred her out of sleep. The place she’d been had been deep, as though she’d climbed into the concept of sleep itself and gotten lost along the way. But the air cracked and split, piercing through the cocoon she’d managed to wrap herself inside, and Buffy exploded into wakefulness so hard she jolted off the couch and slammed onto the floor.

“Ow.”

She didn’t know what she expected in the seconds that followed, but she got precisely nothing. No one rushed in to see if she was all right, no one called out to see what had happened, no one did anything except whatever they had already been doing. In this case, muttering curses in the kitchen while sweeping up what sounded like glass fragments. Normally, Buffy busting her own butt just by waking up was a thing Dawn would relish until she inevitably did something even more embarrassing and shut up out of fear of retribution. Normally.

But this wasn’t normal. This wasn’t even her world. And that wasn’t Dawn in the kitchen.

Buffy sighed and sat up, rubbing the place where her spine had hit the floor. Sunlight was streaming through the drapes, bright enough that she knew it hadn’t just risen. Her body ached in a familiar way, a _you-slept-on-the-couch-all-night_ way. That hadn’t happened in… Well, she didn’t know how long.

Apparently Angel had walked into the house last night and either not noticed or not cared that his wife wasn’t in bed beside him. Or maybe that was too harsh—maybe this world’s Buffy had indeed experienced the same stretch of nightmare-fueled intermittent insomnia and Angel had assumed it was better to let her sleep there than disturb her.

That was something her Angel would do, at least. No, her Angel would have done the romance hero thing where he gathered her in his arms and carted her upstairs, somehow without jostling her from her sleep.

Buffy scowled and climbed to her feet, wobbling a bit with the aftereffects of her very first post-resurrection sleep hangover. It was nice, feeling off-balance for reasons other than being alive when she should be dead, though she doubted it would last long. Especially as memories of the previous night filtered in, bringing with them all the things she needed to do, questions that still needed answering, and what she’d intended to talk to Angel about the night before.

Angel. One thing was certain—she had to get _her_ Angel out of her head, because that was not who she was dealing with. The guy in the other room, moving around and lumbering about in the kitchen, was not the Angel she’d known, and certainly not the one she’d loved. She could assume they shared some traits and maybe even memories, but this was a different world, which meant nothing was certain.

Buffy swallowed and pressed herself forward until she was in the doorway. “Hey,” she said weakly.

Angel, who was busy punching the dials on the microwave, didn’t so much as glance her way. “We need a new coffeepot.”

She glanced at the coffeemaker. The pot was indeed gone. “Was that what broke?”

“Some splashed on my hand.” This came out sharp, defensive, like she was accusing him of something. Still, he didn’t look at her. “So when you’re out, new coffee pot.”

When she was out, implying she would be leaving soon. Buffy crossed her arms. “Any reason you can’t handle that?”

Now he did look at her, and not with surprise as she might have thought, but rather with the tired expression of a man who had already had this fight in the past and was resigned to the fact that he’d have it again. “I’d love to,” he said dryly. “Except I’m not allowed to run errands anymore. Or are you giving me back checkbook privileges?”

Checkbook privileges? What sort of suburban hell had this world’s Buffy been trapped inside? Good lord, no wonder she’d started banging the enemy.

The urge was there to tell him _yes_ and deal with the fallout later—hell, she already regretted that she hadn’t just agreed to handle the task herself. But if Angel wasn’t to be trusted with money, and money was one of those things that had made Buffy’s wish-list, giving him carte blanche on her wallet sounded like a great way to have wasted one of the wishes.

“I’ll take care of it,” Buffy muttered, tucking a clump of hair behind her ear. The dull look he threw her now, one that all but screamed, “Yeah, that figures,” should have hurt but it didn’t. The only thing she felt was a mild twinge of annoyance.

Strange when, at one point, the thought that she could disappoint Angel would have been devastating. But then, this wasn’t _really_ Angel. It was some bastardization of the man she’d loved. Maybe something had happened when he’d turned human, some personality shift or whatnot.

Then again, the look he was giving her now was a very Angel look. Just not one she’d ever seen aimed at her. Not something she wanted to think about.

“So,” she said, hoping she sounded somewhat casual, “how was poker night? Win big?”

“Didn’t lose big, if that’s what you’re after.”

“It’s not.” She paused, begging the cosmos for patience. “I just…didn’t hear you come in.”

“Yeah. You were sleeping pretty hard. No nightmares, I take it.”

“No. No nightmares.” Not unless you counted the one she was currently living in, of course. “What are you going to do today?”

Another one of those narrowed, skeptical looks, like he thought she was trying to corner him. “What is this?” he said slowly. “You’ve been acting strange since last night.”

“Define strange.”

“Well, like that. Saying things like that.”

“What, you mean, talking?”

“We don’t _talk_ , Buffy. We haven’t talked in a long time.”

The microwave beeped, but for the first time, she seemed to have Angel’s undivided attention. He kept his gaze fixed on her.

“I know you blame me for Dawn,” he said after a long beat. “I…blame me too. But I also blame Willow. And Xander. And Tara and Anya. If any of them had said anything, believe me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

That she did believe. A mutual distrust in all things magic was pretty much the only thing Angel and Spike had in common. If Angel had known that Buffy’s death was less a period on her story and more an ellipsis, he would never have shipped Dawn off anywhere. No matter what this universe had done to make Angel the way he was now, she had complete faith in that.

But then something else occurred to her—something that left her hollow.

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation because I wouldn’t be here,” Buffy said, crossing her arms. “If you’d known, you would have tried to stop them. I know that.”

Angel grunted and turned toward the microwave, the cracks she’d managed to make in his stony façade sealing right back up. “I told you I won’t have this argument again. And I’d really appreciate it if you stopped acting like I sent her somewhere terrible. He’s your father. It was the right thing to do. And honestly, if you’d listened to me the first time around, that whole thing with Glory would never have—”

“Stop.”

“You’re too young to be raising a teenager. Do you really think that’s what your mom—”

“My mother begged me to protect her,” Buffy shot back, clenching her hands into fists. Anger, good and righteous, sparked under her skin—anger that had been festering there, burning, toward herself and the stupid thing she’d done and the world she’d made, and Angel had just dumped a bucket of kerosene on the flame, knowingly or not. “Whether or not she was actually my sister, her _daughter_. I did what I had to do.”

“And I maintain that being around _you_ was what put her in danger in the first place. The monks sent her to you for a reason. Glory knew you had the Key. Seemed the best way to protect the Key was to—oh, I dunno— _not_ have it.” He punched the microwave open with enough force that she thought he might have broken it. He definitely would have broken it had he been at full vamp strength. “But no. Buffy knows best. Buffy _always_ knows best.”

“How can you say that?”

“You’re right. The last three years speak for themselves.” He practically tore whatever he’d been cooking out of the microwave. It looked like a TV dinner, film clinging to the carton, steam wafting upward. “But go ahead. Hate me for doing what was in her best interest. Hate me for seeing what no one else saw—doing the thing none of your _friends_ were willing to do. I didn’t ask for this.”

“And she did? And _I_ did?”

“You’re damn right, you did,” Angel snapped, his eyes blazing now. “And that’s what it comes back to, isn’t it? Even now, you can’t stand that I was right. That your little fairytale fantasy didn’t come true, that real life ended up being something a little less than perfect. I was _there_ , Buffy. I was ready to make the sacrifice, make the hard decision. I was ready to do the right thing and you’re the one who stopped me. You want someone to blame for the mess you’re in? Start with a mirror.”

She didn’t have to know what the hell he was talking about for the words to land their punch—it was in his eyes, in the resentment that shook his voice. There had been plenty of times in their shared past when Angel had been pissed with her, but always beneath the hurt and the anger had been an undercurrent of love. Those arguments had been painful, yes, but she’d thought more so because they loved each other so much, and fighting with someone you loved could be nothing but painful.

This was different, though. That undercurrent wasn’t just missing, it didn’t exist. Angel didn’t love her.

The certainty she felt about that rocked her foundation. One thing Angel had told her, damn well beaten her down with, was the fact that for him, he could never move on. And for so long she’d clung to that, knowing that the person she was supposed to be with wanted to be with her too. That if things were different, there wouldn’t be a divide between their worlds—that he would choose her and continue to choose her every day for the rest of their lives. That his moving away _had_ been his way of choosing her, ultimately. Choosing to do what was best for her rather than what they both wanted.

When Buffy snapped back to herself, she was no longer in the kitchen. She was in the upstairs bathroom and had no idea how she’d gotten there. If she’d just walked away from him on autopilot, which seemed likely, given the daze she was in. All she knew was she’d been staring at him one second and the next, she was looking at herself in the mirror. Studying the face of a woman who was not her, a woman who had a wedding band on her finger—a woman who was miles away from Buffy Summers.

She peeled her top over her head, and immediately her gaze went to the healing bite mark above her breast. The place where Spike had sunk his fangs the night before. Somehow, in the midst of everything else, she’d managed to completely disregard the finer details of what had happened in that maintenance closet. Spike touching her, stroking her, kissing her and whispering all sorts of things into her hair, not hesitating to mark her when his fangs descended. Everything that had happened in that span of seconds had completely eclipsed every sexual encounter Buffy had had up until that point. Rough but sweet, desperate but tender, and brutal while also somehow loving—she didn’t think any man had ever come near as close, and that thought was terrifying, because it had been Spike. Not even her Spike, the Spike who had been sharing her silences and shouldering her burdens, but a Spike that belonged to a different world. A different Buffy.

A Buffy who had a husband who apparently hated her, and one she might hate right back.

At length, Buffy tore herself from the mirror and made quick work shedding the rest of her clothes. Then on came the shower and inside she went, ready—desperate, even—to wash off the conversation she’d just had, and the confusing night that had preceded it.

She had a monkey’s paw to find and a few wishes to undo, not to mention a life waiting for her, even if it was stuck in the loop from hell.

That loop was better than this.

* * * * *

For some reason, Buffy was surprised to find the Magic Box more or less the way she’d left it. Part of her had earnestly thought, or rather hoped, that stepping out of her house and making the usual walk to the shop would turn the world right-side up again. That if she believed it hard enough, she could push the door open as she would any other day, have her arrival announced by the tinkling of the overhead bell, and find Anya and Giles squabbling over how to best categorize the potions manuals. The _pretend everything is all right and it will be_ approach had never once done anything for her, but there was a first time for everything.

But of course, that wasn’t what she found. She found a closed-up shop with shuttered windows. A locked door that she had a key to for some reason, and a whole lot of empty waiting on the other side.

Only, wait, not so empty. The door that led to the training room was open and there was definite rustling going on. Buffy frowned and pressed the front door closed, then made her way across the empty space, between the few tables, and had just about breached the threshold when Anya stepped in her way, a full-to-the-brim cardboard box cradled in her arms.

“Oh, penis!” Anya snapped, trying to maintain her grip on the box but not managing. It went tumbling to the floor, and though the _thump_ was a hard one, it wasn’t accompanied by the sound of anything shattering. So, no damage done.

“Buffy,” Anya said, breathing hard and giving her a death glare. “My human sensibilities might be rusty, but I believe it is considered rude to not announce yourself when you enter a space where you may accidentally cause someone to drop something heavy that might, say, break their foot. I’d have had grounds for a lawsuit, you know. I could have taken you for every penny Giles left you, and then some. God knows I deserve it.”

It had nearly been twenty-four hours since she’d stepped into this world she’d created—twenty-four hours of discoveries too large for her head, too much for any one person to handle. And because she was an idiot, she’d been almost certain that the biggest news bombs had already been dropped.

“Giles…left me money,” she echoed, knowing she sounded stupid but unable to help herself. The rest of it locked into place. That awful, hot sensation that had chased her home from the Bronze crept up on her again, spreading across her skin, making her stomach twist and her heart seize.

She’d wished for money. Her wish had killed Giles.

_She_ had killed Giles.

Buffy’s legs trembled. She wasn’t certain how much longer she could remain upright—the floor seemed to pull at her, like gravity was suddenly sentient.

“Yes, no need to rub it in,” Anya was saying when she clued back in—not that she wanted to. She just didn’t have a choice. “You were dead for nearly five months and did he _once_ think to—I don’t know—take your name off his accounts? His titles and lien agreements? Anything, including the store, that was supposed to be _mine_? No. Of course not. I was only his partner. I was only the person here who gave a damn about this place.”

Buffy blinked burning eyes, her throat going tight. “I care about the Magic Box,” she said, her mind, the bastard that it was, dragging her back to that first day when she’d walked in to the image of Giles ready for his very first customer. He’d been standing in the middle of the shop, wearing magician’s robes and a pointy, purple hat, his expression somewhere between dejection and determination.

Giles was gone and it was all her fault.

“Yeah,” Anya said, “you care. You care so much you boarded up the shop and refused to sell it to me. It’s no big deal, just my life’s work. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Because everything is in Buffy’s name.”

That didn’t make any sense to her. In the other world—the real one, the right one—Buffy was fairly certain Anya had been made partner. Or something. Giles had certainly left, not intending to return, from what the others had told her, and the shop had been up and running. Maybe that wasn’t the way it had been in this reality… Or maybe her Giles hadn’t gotten around to making things official where Anya’s ownership was concerned.

But even if that was the case, sense was still not being made. If Giles’s death was the price of her not having to worry about money, shutting down the shop was not the way to go about it. Unless this world’s Buffy had closed the doors to find the mysterious thing that Angel and Spike had asked her about now, though what that could be, she had no clue. It had to be important, whatever it was.

“Everything is in my name,” Buffy repeated, her gaze falling on the box in Anya’s arms, several other things falling into place. The things Willow and Xander had said the night before, things she hadn’t understood. If there was something at the Magic Box that Buffy needed to find, and knowing Anya as she did…

“How did you get in here?” she asked suddenly, straightening her spine. It was a total shot in the dark, but given the way Anya’s face fell, one that hit its mark.

There was a terse silence in which Anya just glared at her, but ultimately sniffed and looked away the way she did whenever she was in the wrong. “The key you confiscated only opens the front door,” she said stiffly. “As any _true_ owner of the Magic Box would know. The back door—”

Buffy held out a hand. “Key. Now. And the box too.”

“Don’t worry,” Anya said, brushing past her with a huff. For a moment, Buffy thought she meant to storm right out the door, but she veered to the left and placed the box on the vacant cash-wrap before taking out her keychain. “Nothing in here is yours. I didn’t go near your precious basement.”

“Still,” she said, her tone firmer than she felt, “you know what we talked about.”

Another silence, this one colder and more awkward, filled as it was with Anya’s grunts and struggles wrangling the other key free of the keychain. Once it was off, she slammed it against the counter hard enough that Buffy knew her hand had to hurt, but Anya didn’t so much as flinch.

“You never gave my proposal a chance,” the former demon said. “It was so easy for you.”

“Believe me, _none_ of this has been easy.” Buffy didn’t object when Anya gathered the box in her arms, though part of her thought she should. But then she remembered what Xander had said about having to live with her, and figured it was likely that this encounter was going to be big on Anya’s List of Grievances when he got home. If there was something in that box she needed, she could hunt Anya down later. Make a real enemy out of her. Why not? She was on a roll.

“You wouldn’t know it,” Anya said, shaking her hair back. “I have done a lot of horrible things, Buffy. Things even you can’t imagine. But it was never personal to me. Not once. Well, okay, once. And sure, I enjoy reaping vengeance on unworthy males—fine. Yet to do this to a friend? Low. Even by demonic standards.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, having nothing else. And she was sorry, after all. For sins Anya had no idea she had committed. “For what it’s worth.”

“Nothing. It’s worth exactly nothing if you’re not willing to fix it.”

Anya paused and looked at her expectantly, but only for a moment. Whatever this was, they’d had the conversation enough times for her to have the lines and arguments down. Instead, she shook her head and started toward the front.

“That’s what I thought,” she said as her parting shot before helping herself out, box and all. The sound of the door swinging shut behind her might as well have been a cannon in the otherwise empty space. It certainly seemed to have the impact of one.

For a beat, Buffy didn’t know what to do. She stood in the middle of the store she apparently owned, her overfilled brain spinning with new information. It took practically no time at all for her temples to start to throb or for the floor to become a moving target.

Giles’s absence hit her again, a sucker-punch to the gut. She kept thinking of him as _gone,_ the way he’d been _gone_ when she’d clawed her way out of her coffin. The time that had followed, after her thoughts had steadied and she’d realized she was alive again, had been a vacuum. All she’d wanted in those days that followed was a parent. A grown-up. Someone who was in charge and wasn’t her who could take the lead and make the tough calls and just give her the room she needed to adjust to living again. Someone the others could look to when things went wrong, to know how to move forward in the face of unbeatable odds.

He’d been gone, but he’d come home. In this world that wasn’t her world, he would never come home. He was just gone.

But maybe not if she found the damn monkey’s paw. If she found it, then she had a chance of undoing the damage she’d done. She had to.

The downstairs was just as chaotic as it had been the day before, and for a moment, Buffy just stood at the top step, staring blankly at the towers of merchandise and feeling more than a little overwhelmed in the task before her. She had a vague idea of where she’d been when the lights had gone out, when the wishes had been granted, but the prospect of getting there seemed herculean. Hell, she knew she’d carved her way toward the door yesterday, pushed rolling carts aside and likely knocked over a few things, but if she had, she couldn’t tell from up here.

Nope, she needed to do some deep-sea diving.

Buffy couldn’t say how long she looked. Once she started digging, doing her best not to knock anything over, she lost sense of time. There were too many tricks her mind could play on her down here. The usual tricks, like if a certain statue looked familiar and if that meant she was near where she’d been the day before, and the not-so-usual tricks, those involving questions about the other objects that were down here and what further damage could she do, even by accident. In the end, she wasn’t even certain she’d managed to get anywhere near the place she’d been yesterday, and cursed herself for leaving when she had, when things had still been fresh. What kind of moron takes the express bus to a new dimension and leaves without making sure the return ticket is secure?

Not that she knew there was a return ticket or any kind of ticket. But god, there had to be.

There _had_ to be.

By the time she managed to convince herself that sticking around would do her no favors—at least for now, mentally exhausted as she was—the sun was well on its way to setting and she still had a coffeepot to pick up. A coffeepot because her husband had broken the one they had. Her husband who evidently wasn’t to be trusted with money, but that was okay because her surrogate father had kicked the bucket and she was rolling in it as a result. Yay her.

Though she hadn’t eaten anything at all today, Buffy felt like she could vomit.

At the top of the stairs once more, she turned to survey the scene below her. The jumble of stuff and things she had inherited, things she didn’t know what to do with, hadn’t the first clue how to sort or manage. Giles had left that to her. And for some reason, she’d shoved everything into the basement, where it was damn near impossible to move, let alone find anything. The number of questions she had kept growing.

Questions she was damn near certain she didn’t want the answers to, but the longer she was here, the less choice she had.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the basement, exhaustion joining forces with defeat and making her eyes swell again. “I’m so sorry.”

It came too late, the tickle along the back of her neck. Then he was there, right behind her, and despite herself—despite everything—everything that was wrong with the world seemed to relax. It made no sense, absolutely none, but it was true all the same. For some reason, her world or this one, Spike was the key to silencing the screams in her head.

“Slayer,” he said softly, lightly gripping her shoulder. “Sweetheart, been goin’ outta my mind. What’s wrong? Did I do something—say something?”

“Why is it always you?” She didn’t mean to say it—the words just rolled off her tongue. “No matter where I go, it’s always you.”

She heard him swallow, heard the way his breath trembled when he released it, unneeded as it was. “Tell me what to do. Anything, pet, you know that. I’m yours to command.”

That was too much—it was all too much. Him. This place. The things he was saying. Everything that waited for her back out there. The jumbled mess that was her head. All of it.

She couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle any of this right now.

So she tore away from him and ran.


	6. Is my malfunction so surprising 'cause I always seem so stable and bright?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to bewildered, Kimmie Winchester, and Behind Blue Eyes for betaing.

She didn’t get very far, of course. Spike had let her run off before without chasing her down—there was no way she was getting away with that two nights in a row.

“Buffy… Bloody hell, Buffy!”

She made it as far as the door, was in the process of pulling it open when Spike slammed a hand on the wood and shoved it back into place. Then he whirled her around, and she met his eyes for the first time that night, not wanting to see what was there but unable to look away all at the same time. Because what was there was fear, and _fear_ was something she’d rarely seen on him. Something he’d rarely shown her.

“Baby, talk to me,” he said, his voice pitched at an octave she hadn’t heard before. An octave that matched the fear in his eyes—desperate, imploring. “You’re not pickin’ up the notes. Not leavin’ any, either. I’m at the end of my bloody tether here. Tell me what’s wrong.”

And that was it. Something in her snapped—the tattered strings of whatever had been holding her together, whatever had allowed her to go this far. She was gone. Bye-bye Buffy. And all of it, everything, came rushing up.

“What’s wrong?” she shouted, shoving Spike back so that he went stumbling across the vacant floor and into one of the abandoned tables. “What’s wrong? How about _everything,_ Spike? All I wanted was for things to be a little better. A little more manageable to make me not feel like I was better off in that coffin. That’s all! But what do I get? I get a mummy-hand loop that won’t end, that’s what I get. I get landed in a loveless marriage with the guy I thought was the _one_ for me. I get friends who are mad at me and Giles is dead and I’m apparently the owner of the Magic Box and Angel sent Dawn off to my _father_ when you— _you—_ spent all summer watching over her. I get all that. I try to make the world better because I’m a complete idiot and better _doesn’t exist_. That’s what’s wrong.”

She didn’t get a chance to take in his expression, see how the words hit, because the rest of it came crashing down and it took her along for the ride. Buffy didn’t fall so much as stagger, straight into Spike’s arms, not meaning to go there but also meaning to, in some way. Tears burned her eyes and scalded down her cheeks. She hadn’t cried much at all since being resurrected, hadn’t let herself. Crying meant handling and handling was something she wasn’t doing very well, except now she didn’t have a choice because her body had made it for her. And now that she’d started, she had the horrible feeling that stopping was out of the question. That she’d stand here and listen to herself making those awful noises she hadn’t made since locking herself in the bathroom following her mother’s funeral and letting go. It had been the only time she’d had.

Spike grabbed her as she knew he would, keeping her from collapsing to the floor and pulling her against his chest. Hugging her, stroking the back of her head in a way that wasn’t familiar but felt it just the same. Like she had spent a lot of time here, her head against his shoulder, his hands on her as he rumbled little incoherent nothings that were still somehow somethings.

“Not a lick of that made any sense, hope you know,” he muttered when she began to calm, when the breaths shuddering through her lips sounded and felt more like actual breaths than desperate gasps. “Not a sodding bit of it.”

Buffy rested her head against his shoulder, squeezing her eyes closed. Maybe if she kept absolutely still, she could just stay here. Right here in this moment forever. It wasn’t perfect but now that she’d gotten it all out, cried as much as she could for the time being, it felt strangely okay, and she knew what was coming would be worse.

She cleared her throat, trying to gather her bearings, knowing it was a lost cause. “What could I say right now that would make sense?”

“After last night? Bloody hell, you got me. Way you ran off, I wagered Red was messin’ with the mojo again, tryin’ to put things right.” He trailed his fingers down her spine. “Never learns her lesson, that girl. But that’s not it.”

“How do you know?”

“Came after you, didn’t I? Bloody near barreled her over tryin’ to get out. Thought for a mo’ she mighta caught wise, the way she was lookin’ at me.” At that, Spike pulled back in full, gripping her firmly by the arms. “Keep tellin’ you it’s gonna happen.”

“What?”

“Your mates sussing it out. That all good Angel’s for is takin’ off and comin’ back ’round when no one wants him here.” He gave her a soft grin, one that spoke of intimacy well beyond sex. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. There was just so much there. “Small bloody wonder he hasn’t cottoned on, himself. But that’s not what’s botherin’ you so _talk_ to me.”

Buffy wet her lips, her gaze following to his. Talk to him. That was all she’d been doing for a while now—using him as her confessional, the keeper of all her secrets. How he had become that, she didn’t know, but unlike everything else in the world, it felt right. Good, even. Those moments she stole away with Spike made her feel something other than dead inside.

This Spike wasn’t that Spike, though. Except he was. Just a Spike who touched her without hesitation, said things without weighing his words, fucked her and called her his. Also, and she couldn’t believe this was _just_ occurring to her, the chip hadn’t gone off when he’d sliced his fangs into her breast.

There was so much she didn’t know, so much she _needed_ to know. And he was the only one she could talk to. Change all of reality and that remained the same. Somehow, it didn’t surprise her.

“I messed up,” she whispered. “Spike, I messed everything up.”

His eyes were warm but the kiss he pressed against her cheek was cool. “So we’ll put things right. Not the first time.”

“It’s not that simple. I mean I _really_ messed up.”

“Nothin’ we can’t fix, pet. Should know that by now.”

The smile he gave her was so tender, full of so much confidence and _love_ it hurt to look at. And it answered a question she’d had, one she’d buried deep under a mountain of other questions. That this world’s Buffy had been having an affair with Spike was something she’d managed to accept without much needing convincing, but part of her had assumed that was because of the torrent of confused feelings she’d brought with her when she’d made those wishes. It wasn’t. Whatever they had, the two of them, was something real.

Knowing that hurt, too. That the something real wasn’t hers.

“Can we go somewhere else?” Buffy asked, stepping back and rubbing her arms. “I…need to pick up a coffeepot. Angel broke ours.”

He rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Of course he did, big wanker.”

“And…I don’t think I’ve eaten today.” In fact she knew she hadn’t. Until now she hadn’t thought she’d be able to keep anything down.

“Come on, then. Lock up here and Spike’ll take care of you.”

Buffy almost started crying again but somehow managed to shove the urge back down. “You won’t want to when I’m done.”

He scoffed, cupped her cheeks and kissed her. A soft, sweet kiss, like the soft, sweet looks he’d been sending her. A kiss that, much like those looks, she didn’t deserve. “Keep tryin’ to run me off. Never learn, do you?”

No, she supposed she never did.

But that was just one of her problems.

* * * * *

If there were any questions as to the seriousness of her relationship with Spike in this world, they were banished the second she stepped into his crypt.

It _was_ his crypt. The same one he called home in her world, only with a few additions. A rug that had been in her mom’s gallery stretched across the living area he’d set up, along with one of her mother’s favorite lamps. A few pieces of art, both from the gallery and her house, were on the walls, making the place look more like a home than her own did at the moment. The furniture was different, too—not the green-upholstered stuff she was used to, but pieces that looked a bit more cared for, like they might have come from somewhere other than the landfill. There was also a weapon’s chest that she recognized as hers being used as an end-table. A battle-axe and a few other choice pieces—her favorites—mounted on the walls within easy reach, should she need to grab something in a flash.

This Spike also had a full kitchen nook, something she would have thought impossible for a literal hole in the ground. There was the fridge, as it was in her world, but boxed in with a couple of tables—one that held a microwave and a toaster, the other with a selection of plates, mugs, glasses, and assorted cutlery. There was a shelf tucked into the corner as well, filled with various nonperishables—and all her favorites, she realized—as well as a plastic bin filled with dirty, albeit soapy water, next to a bottle of Ajax and a sponge.

_Holy cow._

This place was her place too. She saw herself in every corner, every detail. It wasn’t just serious with Spike in this world—it was… God, she didn’t know if there were words for what this was.

They weren’t having an affair. They had a whole secret life.

Or maybe not-so-secret. Did Angel know after all? Was that the reason he looked at her the way he did?

The thought bloomed and died just as quickly. If Angel knew about Spike, he would have brought it up earlier. Would have thrown it in her face—wouldn’t have hesitated. And if what Spike had said earlier was anything to go off, none of her friends knew, either. Must be that none of them ever came by here—the décor alone would be a dead giveaway.

Spike marched over to the kitchen nook without stopping to gawk at the place and placed the to-go sack he’d ordered on the front-facing table. “Grab a plate, Slayer,” he said, pulling out cartons of steamy Italian goodness. That had been another giveaway—he hadn’t asked what she was hungry for, just headed to her favorite bistro, ordered her favorite dish, and paid using actual money. When she’d just stared at the ten-dollar bill he’d placed on the counter, he’d grunted, rolled his eyes, and tossed a few singles on top as a tip, muttering something about bossy women stealing his dosh.

Buffy edged forward, feeling like she might break this reality if she moved too fast. She remembered how she’d thought of coming here last night—how she’d hesitated because she wasn’t sure she would be able to handle learning Spike was gone in this world. It was a damn good thing she hadn’t come. Seeing all of this would have left her paralyzed.

By the time she’d made it to the kitchen nook, Spike had her baked ziti piled onto a plate and garnished with a thick slice of cheesy garlic bread. He’d also ordered a side of toasted ravioli, which he was busy arranging on another plate around a small helping of marinara. A shrill _ding_ pierced the air and she realized he’d also had the microwave running, heating up a glass full of blood.

It was so domestic. All of it.

It was too much.

“Have you ever heard of a monkey’s paw?” Buffy blurted before she lost her nerve.

Spike met her gaze, blinked. “What are you on about?”

“Monkey’s paw.”

“Yeah, Slayer, I heard you the first time. You’re askin’ me if I’m familiar with the bloody thing you’ve been tearin’ the shop apart to find these last few days? Yeah. Mighta come up once or twice.”

“The monkey’s paw is what I’m looking for at the Magic Box.” Buffy released a deep breath, not sure what to do with this information.

“Yeah,” Spike said slowly, the confusion in his gaze hardening into more of that unbearable concern. “Gonna ask one more time and give it to me straight. Has Red started dabblin’ again? She actually try that sodding time voodoo she was blatherin’ on about at the funeral? ’Cause Anya had the right of it—nothin’ good can come from—”

“Why? Why am I looking for it?”

“The bleeding hell do you mean, why—”

“Because I _have_ to find it. I have…” She trailed off, shaking her head. The more she talked, the more worried he looked. There was no dancing around this. If this world’s Buffy had been looking for the monkey’s paw, that had to mean something. Maybe she’d found it. Maybe she’d used it. Maybe she was living in Buffy’s world right now, stuck in a loop that wouldn’t end. Maybe they’d just swapped places. _Maybe, maybe, maybe._ She had to get something definitive. And to do that, he needed to know everything. “Spike, I used it. The monkey’s paw. I used it.”

Something shifted behind his eyes—one part shock, the other part alarm, and the other part outrage. “You _what_?” he snapped, slamming down the glass of blood before rounding the table so he could seize her by the shoulders. “What the _hell_ were you thinking? You know how sodding dangerous that is—”

“I was desperate. I was stuck and I couldn’t get out. I had to.”

“Bugger that. Sweetheart, we talked about this. Went over it. You’re tellin’ me—”

“I’m telling you that I used it and _this_ is where I ended up.” Buffy forced herself to hold his gaze. “I used it and suddenly my life looks like _this._ ”

That seemed to steal the wind from his sails. He released her, staggering back a step. “Sorry?”

“This.” Buffy gestured at the crypt around them—the crypt that he’d decorated with her mother’s things, with her weapons chest and her favorite axe and stuffed full of foods on the Buffy-friendly menu. This entire, impossible crypt that existed in what should have been an impossible world. “I was at the Magic Box and there was this customer who wanted a mummy hand and I found the monkey’s paw by mistake. Anya told me it granted wishes and that Giles had bought it so that he could get rid of it, and then… I don’t _know_ what happened, but time just started to go in circles and I was stuck living the same twenty minutes over and over again and it was too much. It was all too much, and I couldn’t get out of it, so I decided to use the monkey’s paw. See if making wishes would change anything and it did. As soon as all the wishes were done, the lights went out and I landed _here_. Here where…nothing makes sense and Giles is dead and Angel is _human_ and I have to get out. I _have_ to get out of here.”

She stopped talking almost as abruptly as she’d started, the air ringing with the absence of her voice. And then the absence of anything, save the awful way Spike was looking at her, the horror filling his eyes, the echo of his breaths, harsh and rapid against a backdrop of nothing. She didn’t like it, that look or the fact that she understood it. Ever since Heaven, Spike had been the one stable thing in her world. Unflappable, supportive, _there_ , ready to listen or talk or distract or whatever she needed, and likely more where that came from.

“You’re not Buffy,” he said at last, a note of panic in his voice. “You’re not _Buffy_.”

“What? I am Buffy. I am very much Buffy. Buffy Anne Summers, there’s a headstone with my name on it and everything. I’m just not…the Buffy you know.”

Spike was shaking his head, backing away from her. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, his gaze lowered. Then _snap_. Something in him went off, and he became a blur of motion. In a blink, the plate of ravioli he’d just prepared went hurtling into the nearest wall, chased by a tortured, guttural roar. The air cracked as plate shattered, an explosion of crumbs and marinara tumbling amidst shards of ceramic to the stone floor. He was still moving, though, tearing into a frenzied pace she knew well, his face a mask of anger and heartbreak. And she didn’t know what to do—if there was anything to do. She needed answers, couldn’t keep running on pieces of history she didn’t remember living, and like it or not, Spike was her connection. The only one she could trust.

“Spike, I know this is…a lot, but—”

“A lot,” he snarled, rounding on her with eyes that were breaking. “A _lot_.”

“I know. I know—”

“Where the bleeding hell is she?”

“I…I don’t know.” Buffy held up her hands, closing her eyes, hoping to find some spare strength inside. Or at the very least, the right combination of words to make him understand. “I made my wish and I was at the Magic Box. Only the Magic Box was different—everything’s in the basement and I… I don’t know, Spike. I don’t know how any of this works.”

“Right. So naturally, you go and muck with a bit of dark magic and pop into a world that’s not yours. Takin’ things that aren’t yours. Taking _people…_ ” He glared at her a moment longer, then pressed the heel of his palm against his brow. “Bloody hell, Slayer, why did you let me do it? Am I somethin’ to you, where you’re from? Are _we_ something? Is that why?”

Buffy furrowed her brow, not trusting she knew what he was talking about. Except of course she knew what he was talking about—it just didn’t make sense. Spike loved her, that she knew without question anymore, had accepted at some point as fact rather than the delusions of a twisted vampire, but…

But there was no but. There was the logic in her head that clearly didn’t match the logic here. She had no excuse. And worse, she had nowhere to hide. Not from him and certainly not from herself—whatever game of chicken she’d been playing with her own damn resolve since being resurrected. How she sought him out every night, how all the weight of expectation she felt when around the others rolled away when she was with him. That he loved her was a relief, a comfort, and an almost unspeakable temptation. Something that had started, if she were being honest, after he’d made it clear that he’d do anything he could to protect her and her sister, even if it meant dusting. Even if she never loved him back. Spike had started looking different to her then—not an enemy, but an ally. An ally who would follow her lead and give her what she needed without thought or question.

When Spike had kissed her last night, it had felt like the natural destination of a journey she hadn’t wanted to admit she was on, right or wrong. Mostly wrong, because _it_ was wrong—whatever she was feeling at the moment—but good enough that she hadn’t been able to summon the strength to pull back. Falling into him had been easy and cathartic. She’d needed it.

“We’re…not together, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said a moment later. “But it’s kinda fuzzy, in my head.”

“So fuzzy you’ll let a bloke shag your bloody brains out just for kicks?”

“Look, I was losing my mind there last night. Giles is dead. _Dead_. Angel is… I don’t even know, but nothing in this world makes sense to me and then you were there and it—my mind just went quiet. It _always_ goes quiet when I’m around you.”

“Glad to be of service.”

It had been a damn long time since Spike had looked at her with anything other than utter and complete devotion. And that, maybe more than anything that she had seen or experienced since arriving in this bizarro-world version of her life, chilled her to her core. Because both in this world and in the one she called home, Spike was the one constant—the one person she knew she could count on. More than her friends, more than Giles, more than Angel. Losing him was like losing the piece that had been holding her together.

“I’m sorry,” she said before she could think on it too much, wonder if this was a first—had she ever apologized to Spike for anything?—but meaning it all the same. “You… You love me. Or the Spike I know does. Ever since dying, you—he’s—the only person I can really be around at all. Everyone else is just too much. They expect so much and they don’t know, they can’t, and I try to keep it together around them—be the Buffy they know. The Buffy they want, the one they think was in a hell dimension. You let me be me, the only me I can be right now, and I need that. I _want_ that.” She paused, swallowed. “I want you. Or…Spike. And I know I shouldn’t, I know it’s wrong, that _I’m_ wrong, but—”

“Were you in Heaven, too?”

That threw her off her rambling confession, the litany of unacknowledged truths she’d ignored these last couple of weeks. Things she’d hope she’d stop feeling one day, like it was that simple.

But Spike—this Spike—wasn’t glaring at her anymore. His eyes had softened. He looked more like the Spike she knew.

“Yeah.” She pressed her lips together. “I’ve put together that I—or your Buffy—died the same way here.”

“Glory.”

“Yeah. And my friends—”

“Right wankers, the lot of them.” Spike was still a moment longer, then he sighed and edged forward. “What were they? These wishes of yours?”

She’d seen the question coming a million miles away, but didn’t realize until the moment he asked how badly she did not want to tell him. The wishes seemed so stupid now, so selfish, beyond the conceit of thinking she might be able to create a better situation for herself. More than that, she knew the answer would hurt him in some way, even if she wasn’t his Buffy, and she didn’t want to do that. Whatever Spike was to her here, or back in the world in which she belonged, he had been good to her. He kept proving that no matter how things changed, some things remained the same.

“My mom died,” she heard herself say, as though from a great distance. “You know that.”

He nodded once, tightening his jaw. “Aneurism.”

“Yeah.”

“The Nibblet found her when she came home.”

Oh god. Buffy pressed her hand to her brow, her stomach pitching. “Dawn found her? Where was I?”

His eyebrows shot skyward. “That not the way it happened to you?”

“I found her. I came home and—” But the answer came just as quickly. She should have seen it. “I didn’t live there, did I? I was— _am_ —married to Angel. And we didn’t live there.”

“Why settle in the bloody suburbs when you got your own sodding mansion, yeah?” Spike snorted. “So I take it you aren’t the little missus where you come from?”

“No. Angel lives in LA. And is still on a liquid-only diet.”

He nodded, snickering. “He didn’t choose you.”

The words knifed her, but it was an old sort of pain and one without direction. She didn’t need to know what he meant to understand what he was saying, though how _choosing_ her had resulted in his sporting a pulse and becoming a version of Angel that couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her, she didn’t know.

“A-after Mom died, Dawn was… Well, we were all going through a lot. Long story short, I was told by her school that if her grades didn’t improve and if she didn’t stop skipping, I might be found unfit to be her guardian. And wouldn’t you know it, being dead all summer and impersonated by the Buffybot didn’t do much to move the needle.”

“Sorry, the what?”

She glanced at him, frowning. “You didn’t have a Buffybot made?”

“What the bleeding hell is…” But then he trailed off, his expression growing pensive. “That bloke last year—made a robo-girl who tossed some poor blighter through a window. He make a version of you, too?”

“Yeah. One you commissioned.”

Now Spike was gaping at her like that was the most ridiculous thing she could have said, which, given she had lived it, she didn’t really appreciate. Though it sparked something—a possibility she hadn’t considered before.

“Spike…how long have we—how long have you and the other Buffy been fooling around?”

Just as quickly, his expression shuttered. “Fooling around? That’s what you call it?”

She winced. No, that wouldn’t be what she called it. Maybe before she’d stepped inside the crypt, before she’d gotten an eyeful of this place that he had gone to lengths to make hers, but not now. “No,” she said softly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Sorry, no. I just… I didn’t know. Spike—the Spike back in my world… It was just more recent, I think. I didn’t find out he had feelings for me until right before my mom died.”

Spike huffed, shaking his head. “Bit slow on the uptake, your Spike, is he?”

“Hey!”

“Or, more like, things went differently enough there that he didn’t see it when I did. Poor bloke had to make himself a shag toy in your likeness.”

It was beyond weird, hearing Spike talk about actions Spike had taken as though they belonged to someone else. Weirder still knowing that they did, however things worked between these two versions of Sunnydale. This was a Spike who had been with Buffy in one form or another for a significant enough period of time that the extremes her Spike had gone to struck him as funny.

“How long has it been for you?” she asked again. “You and…other Buffy?”

She wished she hadn’t asked for the pain that flashed across his face—a pain she knew well. That dread, that damn certainty, that something precious had been lost forever.

“Long enough,” he said hoarsely. “Look, pet, wager before the night is out you’ll have all your little questions answered, but this is my world, my crypt, and you’re standin’ there wearing _my_ Slayer so we’re doin’ this my way. You want your supper? Gotta sing for it.”

Buffy nodded, eyeing the plate of pasta he’d had all nice and prepared for her. The ravioli might be a lost cause, but she was still hungry and he hadn’t trashed everything they’d gotten from the bistro. “Can that be literal supper?”

At that, his expression softened. “’Course,” he said, and gestured at the plate. “Eat up.”

She flashed him a smile that she hoped conveyed her gratitude and hurried forward to do just that. While the pasta had cooled considerably as they’d talked, there were still wafts of steam rising from the noodles, enough that she didn’t think she needed it to be nuked before shoveling it down her throat. At this point, she wasn’t above using her fingers in lieu of utensils, though Spike was apparently more dignified than that and handed her a fork the next second.

Not just any fork. One from her mother’s collection.

And she had to know, whether she deserved to or not. She had to know before she said another word.

“Is she in love with you? Your Buffy?”

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t have to. The answer was in his eyes.

“Tell me about these wishes,” he said instead. “Then we’ll talk about me and Buffy.”


	7. And the punchline is you were never actually in control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to bewildered, Kimmie Winchester, Niamh, and Behind Blue Eyes for powering through this beast of a chapter. 
> 
> This week ended up being busier than I thought it would be, so I'm behind on answering comments. I hope to get caught up over the weekend. Regardless, thank you so much to everyone who has read/commented/kudo'd. Here's an extra-long chapter just for you with everyone's favorite -- backstory!

She ate while she talked. It was nice to have something to focus on—something other than Spike’s frustratingly unreadable face—as she detailed the wish that had taken Dawn from her. That one was the easiest to talk about and she spent as much time discussing it as possible, making sure he understood the severity of the situation in her world. She also told him more about the Buffybot, about Glory and her Spike, and how he’d sacrificed everything to keep her protected. How he’d watched over her sister all summer and how he’d taken care of _her_ the minute he’d realized she was alive again.

When he asked her what that had to do with the wish, she hadn’t been able to say. Except that talking about her Spike made her hope that this Spike—this Spike who had kissed and stroked and whispered his love for her—would realize that memories aside, she was still Buffy. She wanted to be _Buffy_ with him, not some facsimile. The warmth and concern he’d regarded her with before—she wanted that back. Even if it wasn’t hers.

But she hadn’t said as much. It was hard enough reconciling that thought in her own head, let alone sharing it with Spike—any version of him. So she’d gone on, keeping her gaze on her plate, admiring the way the prongs of her fork speared the noodles open and that the cheese-to-sauce ratio was damn near perfect, and told him about the second wish. The one that had gotten Giles killed.

Only her pasta wasn’t interesting enough to keep her eyes from filling, or the pain that had rocketed through her back at the Magic Box from exploding all over again. Giles was gone because of her—there was no getting around that. She had killed the man who was practically her father, and all over money.

Spike sighed and stood then, rounded the couch where she sat and made his way back to the kitchen nook. When he returned, it was with a bottle of her favorite beer. More bits of Buffy he kept at his crypt.

“That’s how the paw works, pet,” he said, sinking beside her again and handing her the bottle. “Gives you what you ask for but makes bloody sure you pay a price for it. Nothin’ that seems easy comes free.”

“Anya didn’t tell me that.”

“No. Sounds like she just told you it was bloody dangerous and only on-hand so it could be destroyed.” He arched an eyebrow. “And since when do you need to be told the obvious, Slayer?”

“I wish you’d been there to stop me.”

He released a long, shaky breath. “Yeah. Me, too.”

It was unfair, how much punch he could pack into two little words. How hard they sounded, how much she felt them. Buffy pursed her lips and set her plate on the floor beside the couch to give herself something to do as she waited for the awkward to pass. Though the awkward wasn’t just in what she’d said or how he’d replied, so waiting seemed a moot point after a moment. “I don’t know how I talked myself into it,” she said. “I’m…I’m not _dumb,_ Spike. You’re right. I’ve seen what happens when magic goes bad. But I thought I’d be stuck there forever and no one was listening to me. Anya, Giles… I tried talking to them both and it was like they forgot we live on the Hellmouth where wackiness is the status quo. The few times I got Giles to believe me, the loop would start again. And the monkey’s paw was just _there,_ every time I went down. After a while, it started to seem like an escape hatch.”

“Buffy.” When she dared to glance up, she found his eyes were softer than they had been, his expression almost fond. He looked so much like her Spike at that moment that she wanted to cry again. “Reckon you managed as well as you could, yeah? Life for my Slayer hasn’t been a bloody peach since her mates worked the mojo, either. Comin’ back to this, the Nibblet in the wind, bloody Angel pissin’ away the insurance money, her chums figurin’ she was in Hell for some barmy reason. Adds up, doesn’t it? Was why the Slayer and me had the chat we did. Knew it’d be a temptation for her.”

That made her feel marginally better—not so much what he’d told her but that he’d bothered to tell her anything. That he cared enough to try.

Or maybe she was just fooling herself.

“The last wish involved Angel,” she said, looking down again. “He found out I was back from the dead and he needed to see me. And I haven’t felt anything. The only times I do are when I’m with you.” Once the words were out, she feared she’d said too much. That he’d read too much into it, ridiculous as it was. This version of Spike who was in a relationship with a version of her, possibly thinking that she might feel something for him when Buffy knew damn well that she couldn’t. This her, anyway. The present and accounted for Buffy Summers. “It’s nothing you do… It’s more that you just let me be not okay. I don’t have to pretend. I can be sad or angry or nothing at all and you let me do that without expecting me to perk up and be Little Miss Sunnydale about being alive again. I tell you what I’m thinking and you just accept it and god, I need that. I thought… I thought maybe I’d have that with Angel too. But when we met, it was just…bad. He was the love of my life and I could hardly stand to be in the same room.”

Spike snickered and tossed back a mouthful of whatever he was drinking. “Love of your life, eh? Seen the wanker recently?”

“That’s not Angel.”

“No? How you figure?”

“Because I know him. We might not be close anymore but I _know_ him.” Buffy cracked open the beer he’d brought her. “Whoever that Angel is…that’s the paw’s doing. The way my wish killed Giles, it made Angel… _that_.”

Spike brought up his hands as though in surrender, though he was still smirking, which made her want to punch him.

“So that’s it,” she said, pushing on before she did something she regretted. “Those were the wishes. Dawn, money, Angel. And here I am.” Buffy sighed and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “In a world where my sister is gone, Giles is dead, I’m married to a version of Angel that can’t stand the sight of me, and apparently I’m in love with my former mortal enemy.”

“No need to sound so excited on my account.” Spike threw back another drink. “I might blush.”

Buffy rolled her eyes and turned her head to him. “You don’t seem as mad as you were before.”

“’Bout what?”

“Me being…not your Buffy.”

He considered this, though it seemed that he was making a concerted effort to not look at her. “Nah,” he replied at length, eyeing the bottom of his glass. “Could rip your spine out, but I got it figured. You wished your way here—you can wish your way back.”

The thought had her perking up. “You think so? But what will the price be, if I use it again?”

“Not talkin’ about usin’ the bloody paw. More than one way to make a wish.” He grunted though. “Not too hot on magic of any sort, truth be told, but I know one thing for certain—the Buffy who belongs here, the one who loves me, I’m gettin’ her back. One way or another. Best way to do that is to get you back too, yeah? We find a way to do that.”

She swallowed, taking in the determined set of his jaw, the steel in his eyes. A long time ago, Angel had told her that once Spike focused on something, nothing stood in his way. In the years since she’d known him, he’d set out to prove that wasn’t just talk. Everything she’d seen, what he’d done to protect her and Dawn, his dedication to her memory that had kept him true to his promise—all of it spoke of someone who never gave up. When something mattered to him, it really mattered.

And somehow, he’d fallen in love with her. Twice. Though Buffy wasn’t sure how this wish-world logic worked—if this Spike and his Buffy had even existed before yesterday, or if she’d created them simply by voicing the right words while holding the right artifact. Dawn had been sent to her with fourteen years of memories preprogrammed, but that didn’t change that she was barely a year old.

Had she created a new reality or had the paw simply sent her to a reality that fit her criteria? If the latter, did that mean she _wasn’t_ responsible for Giles’s death? That it had happened, would have happened, regardless of whether she’d been a weak, desperate idiot?

The thought eased the weight that had set up shop on her chest, but only a little. There likely was no way to know for sure.

But there were things she could know—things she probably needed to know, if she had any hope of navigating this world until they found a way to set things right. Things about her relationship with Spike, how it was that, in both worlds, he seemed willing to do anything for her. How she could have fallen in love with him when the concept of _love_ seemed so distant to her now.

So she shoved her thoughts aside and went for it. Hell, there was nothing left to lose by asking.

“How long have you and I been…a thing here?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “ _A thing_. Bit of a step up from _foolin’ around_ , I suppose.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

He lifted a shoulder as if to say it didn’t matter either way, but she could tell it did. Even if she wasn’t his Buffy, he wanted her to acknowledge that what they had was real, _important_ , because that’s what it was to him.

“Been in love with her since the bloody start, if I’m bein’ honest. From the second I saw you— _her_ —” He broke off, shaking his head and barking a short, self-effacing laugh. “Bollocks, this twin business is a right trip.”

“Not a twin.”

“No, you’re not. You’re her. You’re Buffy.” Now he looked up, and more of that pain she’d seen earlier flashed across his face. “Suppose that means I love you, too, which is buggering with my head ’cause I’ve always been a one-woman fella and havin’ you here, bein’ her but not her… Fuck.”

Her throat tightened. “Again with the sorry.”

“Wager I’m makin’ it more complicated than it is, yeah?”

“I’m not sure this can be anything but complicated.” She thought for a moment. “But, as far as it being who is who, you’re still you. My friends are still…well, my friends. And I want to find Dawn, no matter if she’s not _my_ Dawn. Because she’s still my sister.”

“Yeah. Funny how everyone in your life’s the same except Angel, innit?” Now he was smirking like he had her cornered. “Sure your glasses aren’t just a mite rosy where you come from, Slayer?”

Yeah, he was definitely Spike. No one else could test her patience the way he did. “Just answer the question,” she said, terse. “You seem to be avoiding it.”

“Not avoidin’ it. Just not sure how much you’re really keen to hear, since you’re still hung up on the Great Forehead.”

“I’m not hung up on him.”

“Made a wish to turn him into your steady fella, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t even about…” Buffy blew out a breath, shook her head. Arguing this seemed a wasted effort, given the circumstances, but the wish had been less about wanting Angel and more about wanting the connection they had once shared. Thinking that perhaps if he’d never left, if they had remained in each other’s lives, his presence would have been more of a comfort.

Though sitting here, Buffy wondered if maybe it had been more about Spike—her own sense of misgiving, of _wrong_ , that came with wanting him, seeking him out. After all, if she could feel that way about anyone, it _should_ be Angel. But it wasn’t. Not in her world and definitely not in this one. This world where Buffy had ostensibly gotten everything she’d ever wanted yet still found herself seeking out the company of the undead. Apparently in love with Spike—soulless, evil Spike.

“That’s the reason you don’t want to tell me? You think hearing what happened will make me see that the Angel I’m married to here is the same Angel back in my world and that will…what?”

Spike didn’t respond at first, but he also didn’t look away, and what she saw in his eyes made her breath catch and her chest tighten. There was so much there—it was unfair how much there was. Unfair how much he could say without breathing a word.

“Watchin’ you lose your head over that wanker was bloody unbearable the first time around,” he told her at last. “Just not too eager to go through that again.”

Buffy worked her throat, her heart pounding now at a hard, unforgiving rhythm. It still seemed ridiculous, though. Insane. The Angel who had glared at her that morning couldn’t be the same Angel she kept alive in her memory—the ghost that had shadowed her relationship with Riley, unacknowledged until the end. She might not be sure what she felt for him anymore—it didn’t feel like love, or at least not the love she remembered—but the feeling itself had been such a huge part of her for so long now, she wasn’t sure what she was without it. That _being_ without it was in part responsible for the decision she’d made at the shop.

But she also knew she couldn’t _not_ know what had happened here. How the world had turned into this. See if she could identify the steps the other Buffy had taken, where the story had veered off course, where the anomalies had been born. Especially if she were to navigate the world that the other Buffy’s choices had resulted in—she needed to know how she’d gotten there.

“I can handle it,” she said.

Spike gave her another smile, the sort that said he knew her better than that, but didn’t argue. “All right, Slayer. Like I said, been since the start for me. Was a bloody goner the first time I saw you move. Took a while to figure it, though, and Dru knew too. Bloody well before I did. That’s why the bitch left me in the first place.”

“Dru left you because of me?”

Amazingly, he chuckled. Laughter was not something Buffy would have ever thought he would associate with that period of his life. “Always surprisin’ people, Dru. Just because she’s outta her bloody mind doesn’t mean she doesn’t see clearly. Certainly had my number.”

She deflated, feeling a little winded. She had never gotten around to asking Spike anything about his relationship with Drusilla. Hell, from what she’d heard, Dru had started fooling around with other demons because she was disappointed that Spike hadn’t let the world get sucked into Hell. Never had _feelings_ come into the mix. The infidelity had always been on her end.

That she had broken it off with him because he’d been in love with another woman had never once been a consideration.

“Mighta dusted not knowing I loved you if it hadn’t been for those government boys,” Spike continued. “After the chip, I couldn’t just leave when my plans went to hell. Had a reason to stick around—needed them to fix me.”

“The Initiative.” So all things secret government-ops had happened here, too. Buffy didn’t know how she felt about that. The more things that were different, the easier it was to reconcile as completely separate from the world she’d left behind. The idea that this might have been her future at any point, but for a few different turns, had her stomach in knots.

But that had to be wrong—it _had_ to be.

“Right,” Spike said, apparently nonplussed that so much of their history was shared, even across realities. “Came to you right around Thanksgiving—”

“This is stuff I know.”

“Oh ho?” He favored her with an appraising look. “Well, love, like I said, that was it for me. I stayed, and I was forced to watch you rather than fight. Couldn’t tell myself pretty little lies anymore. Took you a bit longer. Think you had to go through everythin’ you did before you saw your knight’s armor didn’t shine as much as he’d fooled you into thinking.”

“But…” God, this still didn’t make sense. “How? How in the world is Angel human? How does someone go from being a vampire to— _ta-da_ —with the pulse and the breathing and… If this was possible, why did he leave in the first place?” She paused. “Wait, did he _not_ leave? Did something happen and he decided to stay?”

“Somethin’ happened.” He huffed and shook his head. “You say I came to you over your Yank holiday back in your world, too, after the government sods had wired me up?”

“Yeah…”

“And was your wanker of an ex here doin’ some cloak and dagger rot at the same time?” When she nodded, he perked his eyebrows. “You get your knickers in a twist and tail him back to LA in your world, hopin’ to get your belly rubbed?”

The way he phrased that again made her want to pop him in the nose. He must have known, for he laughed and shook his head.

“Hard to believe you’re not her,” he muttered almost fondly. “Way you’re eyeballin’ me now…”

“I went to LA to see my dad. Angel just—”

“—happened to be a bloody pit stop. Yeah, love, we’ve had this chat a time or two. Got there so you could feed him a piece of your mind or what all. Tell him that he couldn’t come skulkin’ around since he’d been the one to up and leave you high and dry.” Spike swished what remained of his drink from one side of the glass to the next, following the liquid with his eyes. “Don’t suppose your chat was interrupted, was it? Anyone come crashin’ through the window?”

Buffy frowned. The words had her chest doing funny things. “Yeah,” she said. “Actually, I think… Yeah. But Angel killed it.”

“Wagered that had to be it, if he’s still a vamp where you come from.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Slayer, the beastie that crashed your party was called a Mohra demon.”

“Okay?”

“The Mohra came in, mixed his blood with your beau’s, and suddenly Angel had himself a heartbeat.” Spike had looked up again and fixed her with a look that shook her to the bone. “Way you tell it, anyway. Had a blissful reunion shag and were makin’ plans on livin’ merrily ever after till the sod got cold feet.”

“No,” Buffy said shortly. No, that was wrong. None of that had happened. The demon had come through the window and Angel had killed it. It had been a random but ultimately forgettable part of the trip—a trip that had been painful in every respect. Never mind the hell that was visiting Angel, her father had been too busy, too important, to see her, which had hurt even if he’d been nothing but a convenient excuse. “That didn’t happen.”

“Right.” Spike held her gaze for a moment before looking down again with a sigh. “That’d be where the cold feet come in. Angel got himself all bruised tryin’ fight the good fight along with you and reckoned maybe he oughta go back to brooding in the dark to keep you from gettin’ yourself killed. Talked with some higher-ups about turnin’ back the day, makin’ it so you didn’t remember a lick of what might have been, and was all set to go through with it till you caught wise and changed his mind. Not sure how. You’ve never been too giving with these details. I always figured you just flashed your tits and reminded him that he’d be back in the chastity belt.”

The urge to strike him shot through her once more, this time almost impossible to ignore. “That is so—”

“Either way, that was the end of it. All I know is you came back from LA all rosy-cheeked and announcin’ that somethin’ wonderful had happened.” At this, he rolled his eyes and snickered. “Prince Angel had some stuff to sort out, ’course. Closin’ up shop, helpin’ those poor gits who’d signed on with him find new work and all. And you had to break it to that piece of cornbread you were toyin’ with that you and your ex had worked things out. Got a front-row seat for most of it, bein’ chained up at your watcher’s flat. Once you spread the joyous news, I told you right off to let me go—didn’t want a wretched thing to do with Angel. Bastard made my life hell enough before I couldn’t take a swipe at him and I wasn’t gonna sit around and wait for him to come get his jollies by kickin’ me around when I couldn’t bloody well kick back.”

Buffy wanted to argue the point, say that Angel would never punch someone that couldn’t defend themselves, but the words wouldn’t come. Not necessarily because she didn’t believe them, but because it brought to mind how many times _she_ had done just that. Done it without thought, without hesitation, without regret or doubt. Sometimes even when she knew he’d given her good information, punching him just felt like the natural way to conclude their interaction, lest he think she might be going soft on him.

“But you were bein’ a stubborn bitch about it, so I had to make a run for it on my own,” Spike went on. “Lucky me, Rupert’s eyesight started going wonky ’cause of a spell your little chum had cast, gave me an opening. ’Course that meant you had to hunt me down, and Red didn’t take kindly to it, seein’ as she was in crisis herself and a bit sour that things were turnin’ up aces for you after the wolf had run out on her.”

This much sounded familiar, at least. “That was the Will Be Done spell. The one where we ended up engaged.”

“Oh, you too, eh? Fuck, what was a brilliant night.”

“Brilliant? Must have been different on this side of things.”

“How you figure?”

“Because it ended with both of us gagging at having been making out all night.”

“Did it now?”

“Yes.” This she said with a bit of an edge. What the hell was he trying to prove?

His smirk broadened. “You say the Spike on your side’s in love with you?”

“He wasn’t then.”

Spike shook his head, rumbling another laugh. “Tell you how I remember it, yeah? Had her on me, straddling me, world going to hell around us and neither of us caring a lick. Then somethin’ snaps in my head and I remember. She does too. Sorry fool that I am, I think for a mo’ that she might just shrug and go on snogging me. Could tell how hot she was for it, how much she wanted it. But then she makes this face and pitches a fit over how sodding disgusting I am and I pitch one right back, ’cause who the hell does she think she is?” He met her eyes again, greeting whatever he saw there with more laughter. “So what happened for you, love? Spell ends, you’re you again, and you’re wigglin’ on your sworn enemy’s lap. You swoon and let me get a hand down your knickers or shove off and make like I was somethin’ you might find under your boot? Reckon if this other Spike’s at all like yours truly, he would’ve kept on snogging you all bloody night. But a man’s got his pride, doesn’t he? Can’t let on when he knows the bird doesn’t fancy him back.”

That couldn’t be right. While her memory was imperfect and her history with Spike patchy at best, she definitely recalled the horror being mutual. He’d gaped at her and shoved, fought to his feet and swiped at his mouth as though something foul had climbed inside. Spike was many things but a decent actor wasn’t one of them. She remembered because his revulsion had hurt, stupid as it was, insane as it was. She’d just started gaining her confidence back where men were concerned, thanks to Parker—and Angel, come to think of it—and Spike had to make like kissing her had been a punishment or something.

This Spike’s surety had her questioning everything she thought she knew. She didn’t like it.

“Anyway,” he continued when she failed to comment, “Angel swooped right on in after. Went all Neanderthal ‘bout the spell business, tried to run me outta town, but I wasn’t goin’ anywhere till those soldier boys put my head back right. You two decided to tie the knot right quick and I didn’t see much of you after that until the other bird came outta her coma.”

Buffy’s heart began thundering once more, though she didn’t know why. She knew what had happened—or had a good enough idea, based on last time. That didn’t explain the way her stomach twisted when Spike started speaking again.

The first few details were similar enough—those Spike knew anyway. Apparently, this world’s Buffy hadn’t told him much about what happened pre-body swap, so he left out the confrontation on campus and how Faith had gone after her mother and sister. But he didn’t have to say as much; Buffy saw it just the same. The way Faith would have sneered that now that Buffy was the little missus—never mind a college student—she didn’t have time for pesky accessories like a family. After all, everything had turned out just right for her, hadn’t it? Saved the day just as promised and she’d gotten the guy in the end, too. Faith would have seized upon that just as sure as she had in her time. So when Spike got to the part about the doodad that performed the body switcharoo, Buffy just nodded.

“She slept with Angel, didn’t she? When she was in my body.”

Spike paused, favored her with a concerned look, as though debating how much he should share. But he nodded after a moment, sucking in his cheeks. “Yeah. Among other things.” He glanced down. “Also spoke a piece to me that twisted my head around. At first, thought you were just bein’ a bitch as always—first time you’d deigned to look at me since Will’s spell, and all. Then I wagered the little witch had done more dabblin’, because there was no sodding way Buffy bloody Summers would offer to polish my knob when she was married to _Angel_. Not sure what happened after, exactly, ’cept you got your skin back and your loving husband made some remark about how the shagging had never been so brilliant before he caught wise that you hadn’t been behind the wheel. Think you mighta forgiven him for that if I hadn’t blabbed that Faith hadn’t gotten in my trousers, despite her best bloody efforts. Also didn’t help that Peaches put himself between you and her, sayin’ she oughta have a chance at turnin’ it all around, or whatever. Seemed to have a soft spot for the bitch.”

He paused again, and she felt the weight of his stare—felt because she couldn’t meet it just now, too lost in thoughts she’d rather not be having. Old thoughts, those she’d convinced herself she’d left in the past. Only they weren’t entirely the same, either, as the ones she’d once entertained. Close but no cigar. She remembered the way her gut had twisted when she’d seen Faith and Angel entwined during his act as his soulless half. They’d looked good together, natural, and there had been plenty of hunger on both sides—hunger she’d never managed to fully believe was entirely performance-driven on Angel’s part.

Then when she’d followed Faith to Los Angeles, shown up at Angel Investigations to _tip him off_ and found them with their arms around each other—fresh off of having just forgiven Riley for not having known who he was fucking… That had been a kick to the gut. After all, Riley hadn’t known the whole story, couldn’t appreciate just how much knowing they had bumped uglies hurt. But that Angel could wrap himself around Faith after everything she’d done—after nearly killing him with a poisoned arrow, after Buffy herself had nearly died to save him—that had hurt more than all of it. More than Riley and more than Faith going after her family. She’d felt betrayed on levels she didn’t know she had.

“That was the start,” Spike said after a moment, jarring her out of her thoughts. “Not of us, but I wager it’s always there for her. Knowin’ the bloke who was supposed to love her more than anythin’ could look into her eyes and not realize the bird lookin’ back wasn’t her.” A beat, and when he spoke again, his voice shook. “Fuck, it’s gonna be a bloody wonder if she doesn’t stake me when things are turned right again. I’ll deserve it.”

“What?”

“Shoulda known, yeah? Always thought I would.” He sighed, long and pained, and leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees and face falling into his waiting hands. “Promised her and myself I’d never hurt her like that.”

She wanted to ask what he was talking about but she knew. What’s more, he knew she knew. They were in sync like that—always had been, it seemed. “It’s not the same, you and me.”

He snorted. “Don’t try to make me feel better.”

“I’m not. It’s the truth.”

“Yeah? And what the bloody hell would you know?”

“I’m _Buffy_ , aren’t I? I know how I think.”

“And knowin’ what you know, how much it gutted you the first time, you’d forgive the man who loves you—the man you trust not to hurt you—for looking into your eyes and not realizin’ what he was seeing?”

“Spike, Faith swapped bodies with me too. And she slept with my boyfriend. Not Angel, but a guy I’d just gotten serious about. And I forgave him.” She waited for him to look at her, undoubtedly to tell her it wasn’t the same—and it wasn’t; she knew that—but she needed him to look at her anyway. “And it’s still me. I’m still Buffy.”

He didn’t reply. Just sat beside her with his brows drawn, his mouth pulled into a frown, a bunch of stuff going on behind his eyes that made her skin tingle. A bunch of stuff that had her feeling things.

When Riley had slept with Faith, it had been a big blow—one made bigger by the fact that everyone seemed to think she’d taken a perfectly nice molehill and made a mountain out of it. Not true infidelity, after all, because how in the world could Riley have known the person wearing his girlfriend’s face was someone other than his girlfriend? Being upset about that was just silly. He’d been a victim as much as she had, after all. There was no way he’d have gotten groiny with Faith under any other circumstance.

But Buffy had been there too. She’d looked into a demon’s face and managed to find her watcher when no one else had. Maybe that had screwed with her expectations. Maybe she’d thought everyone had the ability to just _know_.

Here Spike felt guilty for unknowingly cheating on his Buffy with a different Buffy. Not even another woman, just another version of the same woman, yet still believing that he deserved whatever anger his Buffy would lob at him. And yeah, maybe he was right. Buffy couldn’t say that it wouldn’t bother her, knowing that someone she loved and trusted had been with someone else, even in the way she and Spike had been together—quick and fumbling and in the dark with few words exchanged. But she also knew herself well enough to know she would understand.

Moreover, she would forgive. Especially in seeing how much Spike regretted it—not just the act itself but what it represented. That knowing someone, really knowing them, meant recognizing them beyond the surface. It meant knowing every part.

Something twisted in her chest, making all of her ache. Riley hadn’t gotten that, and apparently, Angel hadn’t either.

“When did things with us start?” Buffy asked before clearing her throat.

Spike inhaled deeply. “Last year,” he said after a beat. “Dunno what happened, really. Just she reached a point where she realized she was miserable.”

“And Miserable Buffy becomes Cheater Buffy how?”

He snorted again, rolled his eyes. “Let’s say you beg a bloke to turn human for you. Give everythin’ up and come play house for sixty, seventy years or some such. Make it clear he’s your sun and moon and stars, your whole bloody world. Then comes the day when you realize that might not be right after all. How do you reckon you’d explain to him that you had it wrong and he gave up bein’ someone for nothin’?”

The parts of her that had started to soften immediately hardened again. Of course Spike would see it that way. “Angel didn’t want to be a vampire, though.”

“Yeah, pet, he did.”

“That’s—”

“Slayer, he was someone as a vampire. Evil or not, he had his purpose, didn’t he? Had power and strength and more. Why do you reckon he was as bad as he was? Wanker wanted to be feared—wanted to be _remembered_. Worked hard at it ’cause his dear ole dad told him he was a useless waste of space that his mum oughta have snuffed out the second he crowned.” Spike huffed as though this were funny and sat back, slumping against the couch. “You had it in your head that a soul changes who you are at the core—guess you still do, where you come from. Sorry to say, sweets, that’s a load of bunk. All that soul did was flip the script. Instead of bein’ the Big Bad, he could fancy himself quite the tragic little hero. Amounted to the same thing in the end—bein’ somethin’ more than he was when he was alive. Suddenly he’s human again and not important anymore. You talked him outta bein’ someone so he could be a kept man. What’s life for him now? Waitin’ by the door? Takin’ up knitting?”

Her face had gone hot, her temples pounding. She heard what Spike was saying—worse, she understood it, and she didn’t want to. The thought that it could be so superficial, what had happened between her and Angel, hit her in a place she hadn’t been hit before.

“Xander’s human and he—”

But Spike gave her a look and she stopped talking. Xander was human and he’d never been anything but. He’d never had to adjust to being less powerful than he was right now—he’d only had forward.

“Got worse when your mum got sick,” Spike continued a moment later. “Angel mighta been human but he was still your world, far as he was concerned. Then suddenly he wasn’t anymore.”

Again, she swelled with the need to argue. That had been Riley’s problem, among other things. Not Angel’s. Never Angel’s. And she opened her mouth to tell him just that, but then her mind caught up with her and she closed it again.

Angel _had_ been her world. Never once had that not been true in the time they’d spent together—her world had been simpler then, less layered, more childlike and innocent, even in the times that had nearly crushed her. What had happened afterward—Dawn, Mom, the weight and acceptance of what it meant to be the Slayer—had transformed her world into something else. Something less binary and more significant than who she was dating, which had pretty much defined life as she’d known it up until that point.

How much had Angel’s being a vampire informed their relationship in the first place? There had been the thrill, in the beginning, of knowing she was doing something dangerous _with_ someone dangerous, all hormones and stolen kisses and that the world seemed set against them. Then after he’d come back, the thrill had been in the forbidden. Knowing she shouldn’t but being pulled toward him anyway, and once they’d done the tug-of-war over whether they were friends or more than friends or downright exes, their relationship had seemed to center on the fact that they shouldn’t be in one.

Take away the fangs, the thing that made their being together impossible, and what was left?

As though he were reading her mind, Spike nodded and said, “Thing you gotta understand, Slayer, is Angelus was always front and center with his women. He was never a bloody set piece or a caretaker. All or nothin’. If it wasn’t about him, he wasn’t interested.” He met her gaze again, his mouth twitching at whatever he saw on her face. “Look, you asked, I’m tellin’. Like I said, don’t know the full of it. Just what I reckon happened, along with what you— _she_ —told me.”

“She talk about Angel a lot?” The question came out harsher than she intended. Or maybe _just_ how she intended. It felt better, being angry at Spike. More natural. Familiar and right, in a world where nothing else was.

“Well, yeah.” Spike shifted and drew a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Think it was easy for her, runnin’ around on him? Talking’s how it started between us. She wanted to know why I’d known somethin’ was off when Faith was prancin’ around in her skin and her own sodding husband hadn’t. Didn’t ask nicely, of course, and thrashed me around when she didn’t like the answer.”

Buffy snickered in spite of herself. “I bet you just hated that.”

“Catchin’ on, aren’t you?” He flashed an unrepentant grin as he drew one of the cigarettes between his fingers. “Was slow goin’. Talking became confiding, started meetin’ up for patrols and the like. Never forget the time I got her to admit we were friends. You meet Demon Girl’s ex in your world?”

“The troll with the hammer?”

“That’s the one. Buffy took off after he tore up the Bronze, left me to the wounded.” His smile softened and his eyes grew distant. “Told me before she left that bein’ one of the Slayer’s mates doesn’t come with fringe benefits and if she heard tale of me flashin’ some fang to take a nibble here or there, she’d come at me with a stake. If I hadn’t already been lost for her, that’s what woulda done me in.” Spike was still for a moment, then shifted and produced a lighter. “Not too long after that was when it happened. She snogged me. We were arguin’ about somethin’—bugger if I remember what—and then she was kissin’ my lips off and we…”

He breathed out, the sound shaky, and his eyes dark the way they had been last night when he’d been inside of her. Those few blissful minutes when the panic had receded and her world had leveled and she’d felt something other than despair.

Buffy breathed out too, slow, trying to chase the images away. _Don’t go there. You can’t go there._

“Spent the first few weeks hatin’ me and herself, ’course,” Spike went on, voice now somewhat strained. “Tellin’ me it was over and then showin’ up durin’ one of her nightly jaunts to ride me blind. Was sweet bloody torture, havin’ her, holdin’ her, knowin’ she felt… She never told me what she felt, but a man knows. There was a reason she couldn’t stay away. Why she only laughed when she was with me. Why she felt so…” Some of the light faded from his eyes. “Begged her to leave the sod but she felt responsible.”

“Responsible?” The word tasted bitter, but she understood almost at once, that weight settling on her shoulders as though it truly had been her decisions that had put it there. Angel. Begging him to maintain his humanity, to hold onto her, to choose her the way she had chosen him over and over again.

Spike knew this, of course, and didn’t bother explaining what _responsible_ meant. “After Joyce died, the Slayer swore me off. Said it was all a mistake and she needed to recommit to her marriage and what all, though she didn’t want to. Spent the entire time sobbing her heart out, tellin’ me it was for the best and a load of rubbish about the vow she’d made.”

“Fidelity is rubbish?”

“Not what I said, Slayer.”

“But—”

“Suppose you’d rather waste away?” he fired back. “Can’t leave the berk even if you stopped lovin’ him because you think he’s your responsibility, and he won’t leave you ’cause where the bloody hell else is he gonna go? She didn’t know him when she married him, got herself trapped in somethin’ she couldn’t get out of.” A beat, then he released a breath, seeming to calm when she didn’t immediately launch in with something else. “Thought that was the end, me and her. Miserable as it made me. Wouldn’t leave, though, even though she said I should—for me, not for her. She said she didn’t want me to go but wasn’t selfish enough to ask me to stay. Thought it’d be easier for me to move on if I wasn’t here. Just so happens I’m not the sort who takes the easy way out.”

 _That_ Buffy knew intimately.

“And that mighta been it if Glory hadn’t decided I was Key-shaped and tried to bust me open.”

“Glory?” Her heart thudded. “That happened to you too?”

“What? You thought that was just your fella?” Spike shook his head as though offended and at last lit up. “Her hobbits had seen me and the Slayer nice and cozy enough to think I might be somethin’ special so they dragged me to the bitch, who tortured the stuffin’ outta me until I managed to smart off just right so she kicked me free. Then Buffy came in like a bloody Valkyrie and did the rest. Had the witches work some mojo on the crypt.” He fell quiet for a moment, studying the smoke pluming off his cigarette. “Afterward, she came to take care of me, fix me up. See if Glory had gotten anythin’ outta me, too, though she wouldn’t admit it. That was the first time I told her I loved her—mighta yelled it, actually, bloody brassed as I was. Couldn’t believe she’d think I’d do that to her. Not after everythin’ we’d…”

Buffy breathed out in a rush, feeling gut-punched. “I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing what she was apologizing for or why, just that it seemed to be the right thing to say.

“Nothin’ to be sorry for, pet,” he said, somehow grinning again. “Wager she just needed a remindin’. Either way, the whole bloody stint with the hell-bitch brought the Slayer back to me, so can’t complain too much. Wasn’t until the end, before she jumped, that she told me she loved me too. The last thing she told me was that she loved me.” He blinked once, twice, and even though it was dark, she saw the telling shine, the tears he couldn’t help but shed. “Then she was gone and…not even cold in the ground before sodding Angel ships the Nibblet off to your bloody useless father and puts your mum’s house up for sale.”

At that, Buffy jerked forward, her heart suddenly jackrabbitting. “He what?”

Spike frowned. “Yeah. Cashed in the insurance money and skipped town.”

“What insurance money?”

“He took out a policy on you, love.” The frown softened and something that looked close to pity filled his eyes, making her already-roiling stomach grow even tighter. “The lot of us didn’t know until he’d gone.”

Again, the world around her spun, her mind on overload and threatening to rebel. She understood the words in the academic sense, knew what they meant, but fixing them to Angel was another matter. Angel had taken out an insurance policy on her. Gambled, prepared for a payout in the event of her death.

 _It’s normal_ , said the voice of her inner teenager; the one who had been arguing Angel’s virtues since he’d first stepped out of the shadows. _Married people get insurance policies on each other all the time._

That was perfectly true, she knew. Didn’t explain why the thought left her feeling so hollow.

“Think Anya said somethin’ about it making sense, you havin’ such a short life and likely to die bloody,” Spike said, as though reading her mind. “Dunno what happened much after that, truth be told. Didn’t stick around myself, either.”

“You didn’t?”

“’Course not. Had a promise to keep.”

Buffy’s mind spun faster, but she didn’t have to look hard. She knew. “Dawn.”

“Bloody right.”

“You followed her.”

“Told you I’d take care of her and I meant it.” But his jaw hardened and the gleam in his eyes fell flat. “Followed her and took off with her half a dozen times before your git of a father got the lawyers involved.”

“Lawyers?”

“Firm outta LA called Wolfram and Hart. Deals in powerful, black arts mojo. Darkest stuff you’ll ever touch—they got their hand in everythin’. Daddy Dearest got tired of Dawn runnin’ off with a vamp, so he struck a deal and I lost her. Never sussed out how he managed to track us down each time, but he did. Imagine the lawyers had somethin’ to do with that too.” Spike released a low, slow breath, plucked the cigarette from between his lips and shook as he dragged his free hand down his face. “She told me, that last time I had her, that he was aimin’ to ship her off to a boarding school or summat. Somethin’ else the lawyers worked up, no bloody doubt. But god, I tried. When she disappeared, I stormed right into ole Hank’s office to give him a full thrashin’, chip or no, but he’d had some voodoo worked on him too. Made it so I couldn’t touch him without bein’ launched halfway across the bloody room. Woulda found a way, though, Slayer. Better bloody believe it. If it knocked me outta my skin, I woulda found a way.”

The words were heavy with intent, but she didn’t need convincing. Buffy had known for a while now that there wasn’t anything Spike wouldn’t do for her. She’d known that ever since Glory—it was why she’d trusted him with Dawn in the first place. Why learning that he had fought alongside her friends all summer, even after she was gone, hadn’t been all that surprising. Why it had meant something, and why the feelings she had for him had shifted even further into that murky gray area. _Shouldn’t_ and _wrong_ becoming _want_ and _why_ , throwing the already-chaotic state of her thoughts into further distress.

“I’m guessing you heard about the resurrection,” Buffy said a moment later. “Came back then?”

Spike shook his head, still not looking at her. “Came back before that. Needed to get off their radar for a bit, let them think they’d won. Only when I got here, the bloody town was overrun. Seemed the wrong crew had finally heard the Slayer had kicked it and aimed to tear the place up. Couldn’t find your mates so I went to see you—your grave, that is.” He worked his throat, the sound awful against the silence. “Got there in time to see you burst outta the ground. If I had a heartbeat, that’s what woulda done me in. Keepin’ on Dawn, tryin’ to do right by her, kept me busy. Gave me something to focus on, distract myself from the fact that you were dead. Once I lost her it was like losin’ you all over again. All I’d wanted for so long was you and you were there. Thought I’d finally gone full nutter till you looked at me. Then…”

The air fell quiet—much too quiet for Spike, his gaze distant as though he were watching it all again.

“Then?” she prodded.

He gave his head a shake. “Then I saw your eyes—her eyes—and it snapped. Knew it was real, that you wouldn’t look that bloody lost if it were in my head. So I grabbed you and brought you here. Patched you up, talked to you… Best and worst night of my life, that was. Finally, you just…came home. Somethin’ went off and you saw me.”

The way he talked, she _could_ see it. Here, in this place, Spike babbling incessantly to a stone-faced Buffy who wore the dress she’d been buried in, her hair ragged and wild. That sense of emptiness, vacancy, that had dogged her terribly in the first few days—that she’d been trying to outrun ever since—filling her whole. But no trip through town, no horrifying visual of a robot in her likeness being ripped apart, no run up the tower to the place where her purpose had never been clearer, all of her at peace and full of love.

She could see the moment when it hit, too. When this world’s Buffy realized she wasn’t in Hell, but with someone who loved her. More than that—someone who understood, who could bear the weight of her despair when it came crashing down. Losing it hadn’t been an option with Dawn—even spaced out as she’d been, she’d known that. Felt it, that need to keep her shielded, protected, even from herself.

Buffy didn’t realize she was crying until a tear splashed against her hand. It was insane—irrational, even, given what she knew—but a hot, raw jolt of jealousy zapped through her all the same. Someone should have been there for her, too. She shouldn’t have had to wander through town, shocked and terrified, wondering what she’d done to be ejected from the paradise that had become her home.

Spike was still talking, telling her about the days that had followed. How Angel had returned once word had reached him, poorer for having pissed away the bulk of the insurance money doing god-knows-what. He’d taken the house off the market, snarling about it all the while, and Buffy had moved back home. Just like that.

“We were both hopin’ Angel’d just stay gone,” Spike said. “Couldn’t be that lucky, though. Once he heard you were alive he came crashin’ in. Bloody begged you _again_ to leave him but you wouldn’t, of course. Too much goin’ on for you—wrong of me to ask when I did. I just wanted you with me. Always.”

So he’d made a place for her here—made his crypt her true home, the one where she could be herself. Either Angel didn’t notice or didn’t care that Buffy was gone more days than she was with him. He spent his time sulking at home, wasting away in front of the television when he wasn’t sneaking off to get in a game of poker with the only people in town who could stand him. There had been a fight, a big one, when Buffy realized what had happened with Dawn. Spike thought that might be it—that once they found her, Buffy might have been moved to kick Angel to the curb, thanks for nothing.

But then the plane had come down, the one with Giles aboard, and everything changed again. That was how they’d found that Buffy had been left everything. The shop, the contents of the Watcher’s bank account—which had been considerable, thanks to both family money and his own savings. While the money in the bank had been made more or less immediately available due to the way the accounts were set up—and the fact that Angel had never removed Buffy’s name from their joint checking account—matters involving the shop weren’t nearly as tidy.

“Why?” Buffy asked.

“Dunno if I can explain it properly,” Spike muttered, tearing a hand through his hair. “All this makes bugger all sense to me. The shop went to you—just you, unlike the dosh since Angel’s name is tacked onto your financials and the like. Trouble is, your princely husband had you declared legally dead to collect on the insurance.”

“And dead people can’t own property,” she muttered. But they could have bank accounts, apparently, or a husband who hadn’t bothered to inform the bank that the other account signatory had kicked the bucket. “Then how do I have a key to the place? And how can Anya be mad at me for not selling it if it’s not mine to sell?”

“Dunno that Demon Girl knows how this works any better than I do,” Spike replied, snuffing out the last of his cigarette on the arm of the couch. Buffy wanted to protest—it was a nice couch—but held her tongue. “Bugger, didn’t know, myself, until recently. Last week, this lawyer git from Wolfram and Hart shows up on your doorstep.”

“The law firm that helped my dad hide Dawn?”

“Very same. This bloke… Can’t remember what you called him—right nancy name, whatever it was. He tells you that they can help you come back from the dead a damn sight faster if you’re willin’ to do a song and dance for them.”

Well, that was certainly nervy. Buffy clenched her jaw, charged with renewed anger, but anger that had a point—a direction, and one that wasn’t aimed at herself, which was a refreshing change of pace. “I’m guessing I responded with a thorough ass-kicking.”

“Wager you would’ve if the ponce hadn’t talked fast.” He offered a flat smile. “Turns out the bloody lawyers just want one thing. Somethin’ they think Rupert had shipped to the store before he kicked it.”

The rest of the pieces fell into place. “The monkey’s paw.”

“Kewpie doll for the little lady. Got it in one.” That awful, flat grin was back. “You fork the bloody thing over and Buffy Summers lives again. Don’t and they’ll pull every string they have their mitts on to keep you dead on paper.”

“I’m still not seeing why I didn’t answer with an ass-kicking.”

“More than the shop on the line, pet,” Spike replied, his voice soft.

And she understood almost immediately—clarity hitting her like a lightning bolt.

“Dawn.”

“Yeah. Can’t be her guardian if you’re dead. Nancy lawyer says if you play nice, give them what they want, they’ll bloody guarantee she comes home.”

Buffy sat back hard enough that the air was forced out of her lungs. Her temples throbbed and her chest hurt. Hell, all of her hurt. She’d wanted answers. Now that she had them, she thought she might suffocate. Open her mouth and choke on the dirt from the grave she never should have clawed her way out of.

She had been trapped before—gasping for air she didn’t want to breathe, forcing herself to survive each moment on the absent hope that life would suddenly be worth living again. That life, with its debt and heartache and loneliness, had been slowly poisoning her, taking every good thing she’d thought or experienced in Heaven. She’d told Spike that living there was Hell and she’d been right, only she hadn’t appreciated just how many faces Hell could wear.

The problems saddling this world’s Buffy were beyond her reckoning. She didn’t know how to move forward without Giles, how to talk to an Angel who didn’t love her, worry about the legalities of being alive or dead, or exist with a Spike who not only loved her but knew intimately what it was to be loved by her. Knowing everything that had come before didn’t change that—didn’t give her magical insight. It made everything worse, driving home that escape from her own life had never been realistic, no matter what she wished.

All she had now was context, and context solved nothing.

“I have to find a way back,” Buffy said hoarsely. “This is too much. I can’t stay here, Spike.”

“No,” he agreed, lighting up another cigarette, “you can’t.”

She didn’t know what it meant that his ready agreement hurt, but it did.


	8. The more you know you know you don't know shit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Busy day today so I'm posting early. Nearly caught up with review responses, but I know I still have several to answer. Hopefully next week will be less hectic.
> 
> Many thanks to bewildered, Niamh, and Kimmie Winchester for betaing.

Spike hadn’t said anything in a few minutes, rather let her sit with an overfull brain insistent on tugging her in a thousand directions. Every time she settled on an area— _Angel, Dawn, Dad—_ something else would pop up, an observation or a rogue thought or even the hint of an unnamed feeling, and she’d find herself torn down another path, in another direction, barraged all over again with images and sensations of a life that wasn’t hers.

Then came the doubts, the fears and worries. She had to go back to the world she’d left, the one that was somehow better than this one, but she had no idea where to start. The only thought she’d had before was to find the monkey’s paw. Sure, she’d had no idea what she’d do with it once she found it—if destroying the thing would undo the things she’d wished—but it had been a starting point. Find the paw and go from there.

Except the paw was at the center of more than just her wishes. She wondered how long it would be before Spike realized that. If he already had, and if that was why he’d mentioned finding alternative wish-means by which to get her back where she belonged. And conversely, what he would do if he learned the only way to get back this world’s Buffy was destroying the thing that would ensure Dawn came home. Would he make the right choice? Would _she,_ knowing that she might never get back where she belonged?

The more she thought, the more dead ends she encountered, and the more that terrible pressure in her chest rose. It was worse than it had been before. At least then she’d been the only one suffering. Even in those moments in which she’d entertained the darkest of dark thoughts, when the only thing keeping her from death was the fear of killing herself, she had been the only one with anything of value to lose. Yes, the others would mourn her, but once Spike told them about Heaven—as he undoubtedly would—she trusted that her actions would make sense. There would be recriminations and guilt, Dawn would suffer greatly knowing that Buffy had felt taking her own life was the only way to reach any kind of peace again, but she would ultimately heal. Understand. They all would, and they would learn to live without her. Carry on as best they could, and possibly even let her go.

There was some terror in realizing that taking her own life now would have repercussions beyond the obvious. The body she inhabited wasn’t entirely hers. It belonged to a Buffy who was married to Angel, a Buffy who loved Spike and was fighting now to bring her sister home. And there was this world’s Dawn, who might not even know her sister was back from the dead. While Buffy hadn’t let herself entertain thoughts of suicide too much, knowing the option had been there, that she could yank on that ripcord anytime the burden of living became too suffocating, had let her catch her breath in the moments when her lungs struggled to work. That ripcord wasn’t available over here. Not without killing someone else—a Buffy who, despite everything, seemed ready to fight rather than curl up and surrender. This world’s Buffy had a reason to keep going.

The things she’d learned settled alongside the things she’d been carrying ever since she’d fought her way out of her grave, her brain seeming to bend under the weight. And at last, after a long stretch of nothing, she broke.

He was on the other side of the crypt when the first sob burst from her lips, busying himself with the dishes— _Spike did dishes_ —and right there beside her the next second. There was no reason for any of this to feel normal, natural, but somehow it did. Spike’s arms around her, his chest rumbling as he fed her soft words of comfort, his hands stroking along the back of her head. It was strange, losing control like this. She hadn’t cried in anyone’s arms in so long—since Angel, really. Hadn’t let herself fall apart except when she was alone. Hadn’t felt anyone else was strong enough to hold her up, could accept her weakness when she could barely accept it herself.

He’d told her a lot about his relationship with this world’s Buffy, but there was even more in what he wasn’t saying. That this felt as right as it did meant something beyond stories—or rather, gave those stories weight, the same way the crypt did. The shelves stocked with Buffy favorites, the cool ease with which he had ordered dinner, placed in her hand the only beer she’d ever actually liked, all without thought. It all meant something.

It also hurt. None of what she saw was hers. She had the right face and all the right parts but she wasn’t the right Buffy.

That shouldn’t matter but it did. Somehow.

“Sorry,” she said a moment later, forcing herself to pull away and trying hard not to read too much into the fact that she wished she didn’t have to. In the time since she’d been back, she’d only allowed herself to lean on Spike in the metaphorical sense. Always flirting with more, knowing that was what he wanted and what she could take if she was brave enough, but also adhering to the line she’d drawn. “I guess it just all caught up with me. I’ll try not to go to pieces on you in the future.”

Spike offered a half-grin, palming her cheek in a move that felt both overly intimate and incredibly familiar. Like her body remembered what her mind did not.

“All you’ve been through, love, you’ve earned the right to go to pieces anytime you fancy.”

“Well, I don’t. Fancy, that is. I’d really prefer to not.” She tried for a smile that felt more like a wince. “I should probably get going soon. Still have a coffeepot to grab and all.”

“Sod it. Take the one here. I’ll just nick another.”

“I let you steal things in this world a lot, huh?”

He shrugged a shoulder, the half-grin from before growing a bit wider. “Reckon you think there’s more important evil to stop on most days. Sometimes you really let me have it.” He winked. “Sometimes that’s half the bloody fun.”

Her chest tightened. All of her did. There were things she still didn’t understand—things she thought maybe she was better off not pursuing at all. Still, the way Spike talked about her couldn’t help but make her wonder, as part of her had—willingly or not—wondered from the start. Learning he was in love with her had upended her world in a lot of ways, first because it had seemed impossible—like he’d gotten bored one day and thought he’d try his hand at playing one of the good guys for real. Or maybe she’d hit him a bit too hard and his brain, already compromised due to the electrical currents that kept him in check, had landed on an impossible conclusion. Whatever the reason, Buffy had been confident that whatever Spike felt wasn’t love or anything remotely close to it. Just a weird, gross vampire thing he’d dragged her into. He’d always had a slayer fixation, after all, and a twisted sense of what constituted romance. With so much time on his hands and no other available means of being destructive, perhaps it had only been a matter of time before he convinced himself that he had the hots for the enemy.

Then Glory had captured him and he’d done something Buffy would never have thought possible. Something that a man in love would actually do—something that had forced her to look at him as she never had. More than that, she’d accepted that the thing he felt was real, or as real as it could be for a vampire. That perhaps it wasn’t her version of love, but it was _a_ version, and wrong or not, it had brought him to her side. Made him an ally. Made him someone she could trust.

And once that door opened, the other doors had too. There hadn’t been a ton of time between Glory’s torture session and Buffy’s swan dive, and that meager had been occupied with anxiety and a looming sense of inevitability regarding the end of her own story. But there had been a few stolen moments here and there in which she’d found herself thinking about Spike and wondering.

Those thoughts had made it easy for her to seek him out after she’d been torn from Heaven. Those thoughts plus the way he looked at her, how he seemed so willing to be whatever she needed _when_ she needed, and the lack of expectation he brought to every encounter. No egos to tend, either. No need to be anything other than Buffy. Buffy as she was and not as he wanted her to be. Just Buffy.

Now she was with Spike—a version of him, at least—and the questions her mind had never been brave enough to tackle were being answered. The world around her might be a funhouse variation of the one she knew but it was close enough to strip her of any illusion that she was safe from what it revealed. Even the things she hadn’t wanted to think possible had twisted enough in her head that she found herself wondering.

Had the demon that burst into Angel’s office that day really been the sort that could turn him human? Her memory of the visit wasn’t exactly stellar—buried under hurt, time, and death—but the more she thought about it, the more the scene solidified. Angel leaping into action, killing the creature without effort or hesitation. That alone wasn’t indicative of much—Angel was more than capable of killing demons without breaking whatever the vampire equivalent was for a sweat—but that Spike had mentioned it at all, and that it _had_ happened in her world as well, made it the sort of thing she couldn’t just dismiss.

And if she couldn’t dismiss that, then she couldn’t dismiss anything else he’d said.

“Do you think I’ll leave him?” Buffy found herself asking. When Spike arched an eyebrow, she rubbed her arms and drew in on herself. “All the things you said… Angel taking out an insurance policy on me, sending Dawn to Dad, putting the house up for sale… The things _he’s_ said to me since I’ve been here, I wonder if he’s waiting for one of us to say uncle or something.”

Spike tilted his head, working his throat. “Dunno,” he said. “Bloke can hope, though, can’t he?”

“If I did leave him, do you think the excitement would go away?”

“Excitement?”

“You know. Sneaking around. Getting away with something right under his nose.”

“Ooh, you havin’ fun, then? Get a little thrill when you crawled back into your marital bed last night with another man’s spunk in your snatch?”

Buffy recoiled so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash. Once again, the urge to punch him arose, hard and swift, so much so that she had to dig her nails into her palms to keep herself from raising her fist. Not that she knew exactly _why_ she was stopping herself—might have something to do with the way he’d held and comforted her a second ago. Comforted her. Confused her. Made her forget who he was. Who he _always_ was, regardless of what the world looked like.

“Thank you,” she snapped, struggling to her feet. “For a second I forgot that you’re a disgusting pig. That’s a mistake I won’t make again.”

“Touched a nerve, I see.” Spike had the audacity to laugh at her. “Not insultin’ at all, is it, to assume the only reason I have a yen for the Slayer is because she’s with another bloke? Guess I should just take that one lying down?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s exactly what you said, pet. You think that’s all this is? Think I chased the Nibblet across the sodding west coast for kicks? I’m in love with you. With _Buffy_. If she ever kicked that miserable sack to the curb where he belongs, would be the happiest day of my life.” He also rose to his feet with that liquid grace that couldn’t help but remind her he was a predator underneath. “Spent more than a century devoted to one woman. Would still be with her if she hadn’t given me the old heave-ho.”

“Which she only did because you said she knew how you felt about me.”

“Right.”

“So that couldn’t happen again? Once the excitement’s gone, you wouldn’t just…fall in love with someone else?”

He laughed again, like the question was ridiculous. Like she didn’t have very good reasons to ask. “Dru woulda been fine with me runnin’ around on her,” he said calmly. “Insisted on it a time or two. Liked bringin’ toys to bed. Didn’t mind if I wanted to play with my food, either. Sometimes she insisted on that too. And what did I do? Everything I bloody could to make her happy, whatever it was. Even if I wasn’t hot to do it, I did it. Because of her.”

Her stomach roiled. “You’re disgusting.”

“Yeah. Maybe. But it was what she wanted. All about her. And yeah, she’d toy with other blokes. Sometimes just to torture me, which also got her hot. Nothin’ she loved more than drivin’ me outta my noggin, knowing she was it for me.” He began prowling forward, and even in the dark she could see his eyes narrowing. “That was the difference, see. What I did I did for her. Always for her. She was everythin’ I wanted. And that was just the way she liked me—on my knees, servin’ her, lettin’ her do whatever she bloody pleased. She liked me well enough, maybe even loved me a little, however she could, but not like I did. And I knew it. Knew it when we were a happy family slaughtering villages alongside Darla and Angelus, and I knew it after he took off. But for a stretch there, once he was gone, I could convince myself that things had changed. That without her daddy around, she’d see what she had in me. The same she’d never have in him.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because that’s why I fell in love with you, you daft twig. You love the way I do—all blood and heart and soul. And you’d do _anything_ for the people you love.” Spike stopped, just a pace or so away now. “Didn’t know someone could love the way I did until I saw you. All you were willin’ to do for that ponce. Burrowed in deep. Made me realize that was what I wanted.” He swallowed. “You were what I wanted. Dru couldn’t stand not bein’ all I thought about anymore.”

“But that—”

“And that’s what I have with you. Here. Doesn’t look the way I want it, of course, but that’s how you love me.” He sighed and looked away, some of the stiffness in his shoulders relaxing. “More than that, too. It’s who you are. How you never give up, how you fight with everythin’ you are, how you always _try,_ no matter the odds. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone and would go to the end of the sodding earth to prove it. So yeah, _Slayer,_ you ask me if I’d lose interest once you could be mine completely? If you knew me at all, you’d know that’s not me. Not you, either. You don’t go behind Angel’s back ’cause it gets your rocks off. You do it because you don’t love him and feel, with that big bloody heart of yours, that it’d be crueler to cut him loose when you’re all he has in this sodding world. Or were, at least, before you kicked it. Dunno how you feel now. But no matter what you decide, I’ll be where I’ve always been. Right beside you.”

The air around them fell still, save for the hard breaths ricocheting against her chest. Her skin was hot, sweaty, like she had just run a marathon. The words had struck something inside her, something tender and sore. A piece of herself that she’d gone to the desert to find, only to be told she was full of love and love would lead her to her gift. That had comforted her at the moment, being full of love, but she hadn’t felt it at all until that moment on the tower’s platform, the sun cresting over the horizon and the world descending into chaos. There had been flickers here and there, flickers that seemed to vanish the second she gave chase.

Spike was describing a Buffy whose love-meter apparently wasn’t broken. One who had found the thing she’d spent the entirety of her relationship with Riley trying to feel, consciously or not. Maybe Angel was what had done it—instead of breaking her heart the way he had in her world, he had lost it in increments to someone else. Loving again, scary, messy love, wouldn’t have terrified _that_ Buffy like it had terrified her.

The thought alone was too big for her brain, especially on top of everything else, and she didn’t want to sit with it. So she cast about for a distraction. It was either that or actually leave, but she didn’t want to do that, either.

“Do you often bite me during sex?”

That question was apparently enough to throw him off his game. Not for long, but long enough. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Been wonderin’ on that a lot, have you?”

“Sorry. It just…came out.”

“Why’s it you wanna know?” he asked, a slight edge to his voice.

“I don’t know.” Buffy looked down, hugging herself. “Just…occurred to me that Angel and I must not be physical or anything if you’re biting me on the regular. That seems like the kind of thing he’d notice.”

“You’re talkin’ like he pays attention to anythin’ other than himself, love.” He snickered. “Sorry to burst your bubble.”

“So we don’t. At all.”

Spike shook his head, giving her a look that was a little too knowing for her liking. “Stopped shagging sometime last year, far as I can tell.”

“Far as you can tell? What does that mean?”

“Means you stopped smelling like his jizz.”

Her stomach gave a roil in complaint. “That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah, well, won’t hear me arguin’.”

“You can _smell_ that?”

“More than I want to.” He snickered again, then turned and strolled away as though done with the conversation. But then he started talking again once he was situated in front of the tub filled with their used dishes. “Told you as much once last year, too, back before you realized what a handsome, shaggable devil I am. It had been a month or so since I’d gotten a whiff of it and asked if there was trouble in paradise. You popped me in the nose.”

Good. That saved her the trouble of having to do it now.

“So Angel and I aren’t sleeping together,” she said, thinking now about the man who had greeted her the night before. Chowing down on chips and drinking beer like it was his job, not so much as flicking a look in her direction until she’d drawn his attention to her. “Have we not since…you and I started our thing?”

Spike hesitated then glanced over his shoulder. “Never ask.”

“But you can smell it.”

“Scrub yourself good enough, Slayer, and—”

“But—”

“I don’t wanna know, all right?” Now he whirled around again, bits of soapy water soaring through the air with the force of it. “Can’t bloody stand the thought of him touchin’ you. It was bad enough when it was Dru, but she was never mine, was she? Always on the hook, waitin’ for Daddy to come and swoop her up again. Not like it is with you. Never had a chance of bein’ hers the way I’m yours, or knowin’ she was…” Spike trailed off, breathing hard, then tightened his jaw and tore his eyes from hers. “You asked me to bite you and I did. And you kept wantin’ it—needin’ it. What’s a man got to do but give the woman he loves what she wants?”

“Needing it?”

“Little death wish yours truly can fulfill every night since you know I won’t give you the other one.”

“It started after I came back, then. The biting.”

He waited a beat, nodded and sighed. “Yeah. Second or third time, you wanted it harder. I gave it to you. Not enough, though, you said. You wanted it hard enough to hurt. Lost control and my fangs came out.” Spike pressed his eyes closed and breathed another long breath, the sort she’d come to associate with restraint. “After, you said somethin’ about bein’ more careful the next time. That spot I got you last night—that’s where you like it the most.”

Something flickered across his face, more of the same of what she’d seen before. The reproach, the shame, the guilt of having a _last night_ to reference because he felt he should have known. And again, she didn’t know how to handle it—the knowledge that it bothered him as much as it did. That he understood as much as he did, that logical or not, it would hurt to know someone didn’t know her well enough to know. Even if the woman he’d confused her with happened to be another version of her—a version that could have easily been her had one little thing gone differently.

That was hard to swallow as well—the fact that this world no longer seemed impossible to her. That, sometime over the last couple of hours, the version of Angel that lived here felt more like the Angel she knew or could have known. Part of her held out, though, that he had it wrong. Had to, because the other thing meant letting go of something she’d held onto for so long she wasn’t sure who she was without it.

“You said you won’t kill me,” Buffy said after she found her voice. “That you won’t give me my death wish. Is that something I’ve asked you to do?”

Spike kept his gaze on the stone floor for a moment. “No. You know the answer.”

“But you _can_ bite me so does that mean you could kill me, if you wanted?”

“Drop it.”

“You said you had the chip here. Do you not anymore?”

“Slayer—”

“Because you didn’t have a reaction when you bit me last—”

“Right,” Spike said shortly, his jaw tight. “Tell me it hurt when I bit you. Tell me you didn’t clamp down on my cock and come harder than you have in your life. Tell me you didn’t love every second. Say it and make me believe it and I’ll tell you exactly why the sodding chip didn’t fire. Savvy?”

Heat flooded her cheeks at that, and she hated that it did. But then she’d asked for it. Spike inside of her, his mouth on her skin, how he pumped and pushed and filled her up, and the bite had all of it coalescing into something beyond anything she’d experienced in the past. He’d sliced his fangs into her skin and she’d gone nuclear with pleasure. Pain had flickered, yes, but a good sort of pain. Pain she could see herself craving. Hell, she already did.

And there was a heady thought—one she didn’t want but couldn’t fight, any more than she could the knowledge of just how good that bite had felt. She wanted more of what she’d experienced last night. That blissful, numbing pleasure that had chased away bad thoughts and worse feelings. She wanted him, full-stop. To feel that loved, _cherished_ , again. Let him take away this awful world and its consequences and everything else. It was wrong, yeah, but nothing else was right, so what did a little wrong matter?

There was the slight issue that Spike was loyal to this world’s Buffy, but he’d also admitted they were the same. Said that since she was Buffy, he loved her, too. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

“Have I said it?” she asked. “Since I came back?”

“Said what?”

“That I love you?”

Spike recoiled as though she’d slapped him. “What the bleeding hell are you playing at, Slayer? Tryin’ to make it hurt, is that it?”

“No, I just… I haven’t felt anything. Not until last night.” Buffy’s eyes stung again, new tears brimming there, threatening to topple over. That was what she hated about crying, how easy it was to start again once she stopped. How quickly she could lose herself when she knew she couldn’t afford to. “The only time I come close is when I’m with you.”

“Yeah, you sung me this one already. Stringin’ that poor git along on your side.”

“I am not stringing him along.”

“Only feel when you’re with him, this bloke who’s so arse-over-heels in love with you he doesn’t know how to bloody think straight?” Spike arched an eyebrow as though daring her to argue the point. “She didn’t know I was lost for her when she first started hangin’ around. Reckon she wouldn’t have otherwise, and it bloody well knocked her for a six when I let it out. But by then she was in deep, herself. You ask if she’s told me she loves me since she’s been back? Yeah. Every sodding night. Meet up for patrol, talk out the things you’re not sharin’ with your mates, and more about how we’re gonna get the Bit back from your old man, then we shag each other rotten and you tell me again and again that you love me. Nights he goes off to lose his allowance at cards or you’re off with your mates, we steal away. And if ever you need to tell me somethin’ but can’t risk runnin’ by, there’s the notes.”

“Notes?”

He nodded. “Leave ’em in the notch in that rosewood at Shady Hill.”

“Shady Hill? Why there?”

“Figure less conspicuous, you leavin’ love notes in a tree in a different graveyard, yeah?” Spike lifted a shoulder—another one of those _as though it matters_ gestures that she knew was his way of covering for the fact that it mattered a lot. Everything mattered to Spike. “Also, we don’t use our names.”

“We don’t?”

He shook his head, a smile that managed to be both fond and pained tugging at his lips. “In the beginnin’, you said some rot about how Angel was the Romeo to your Juliet, couldn’t believe things went as south as they did. Never did read the full play, did you?”

Buffy frowned. “I know they die.”

“Slayer, Romeo and Juliet were two bloody children who got a load of people killed because they decided they loved each other at first sodding glance and bugger all else. The girl was thirteen, the boy Dawn’s age. You really fancy that comparison?” Spike studied her for a moment before breaking off with another grin. “Told you we were more than that. Keep bloody Romeo and Juliet. You and me? We’re Benedick and Beatrice.”

“What and who?”

“Benedick and Beatrice. They start off as enemies until they realize that they’re perfect for each other. Still Shakespeare, and this one at least ends well. You— _she_ liked that. Perfectly matched, happy ending to boot. So that’s what we call each other in the notes.” He shrugged, still grinning. “Dunno what good it’ll do if Angel ever found ’em. Wager he knows your handwriting well enough to put two and two together. Might be a thick git but he’s not _that_ bloody thick.”

Buffy nodded to show she understood when of course she didn’t. But this wasn’t her world, her life—the decisions that had led her here hadn’t been _her_ decisions. She wasn’t the Buffy who was two years deep into a bad marriage, nor was she the Buffy who had decided to do the one thing she’d always promised herself she wouldn’t. The logistics of an affair—an affair that was both emotional and physical—weren’t hers to figure out.

“And the others don’t know,” Buffy said. “About you and me? Not even Willow?”

Spike huffed like she’d said something funny. “More people know, more chances are it gets back to him, right? No one knows, far as I can tell. Doesn’t mean they won’t catch wise one of these nights. Keep tellin’ you they will, point of fact.”

“And Angel definitely doesn’t know.”

“Hasn’t come at me with a stake yet. Hasn’t tossed it in her face, either. Safe to say the berk woulda high-tailed it after making some grand speech about all he sacrificed if he ever sussed it out.” At that, he flashed her a flat smile, then jerked his head at the door. “Best be gettin’ on, yeah? Appearances to keep, and what all. Don’t much fancy muckin’ up my Slayer’s life while she doesn’t have the wheel.”

Buffy nodded, wetting her lips, but otherwise not moving. It was still there, that thing she wanted. Needed. It might not be hers…but it was Buffy’s, and she was Buffy. “You really think you’ll get her back.”

“No matter of _think_ about it, pet.”

“But what if destroying the monkey’s paw is the only way to make this right?” She hadn’t quite meant to blurt that out the way she had, but there was nothing for it now. The question was out there, between them. “If we destroy it, then there goes the chance to get Dawn back.”

Spike blinked at her, shook his head. “Yeah, ’cause you’ve never managed the impossible before. Never known you to throw in the towel without a fight.”

“I’m not throwing in the towel. I’m just—”

“Slayer, dunno how else to say it, but you’re not stayin’ here. One way or another, we get you back where you belong. You _both_ back.”

“But what if this _is_ where I belong?” she shot back, reckless and wild. “I _wished_ for this, Spike. What if I made this world with my wish and you didn’t actually exist two days ago? What if we find the paw and we can’t destroy it, or destroying it doesn’t matter? Or we learn that it’s the _only_ way to get Dawn back? And why the hell does my father suddenly care about her, anyway? If he knows I’m back, wouldn’t he just want to hand her off as quickly as possible? Have I tried just _calling_ him and letting him know—”

“What?” Spike barked, rigid with anger again. “That his eldest crawled outta her grave? Yeah. You tried that. The ponce took it about as well as he did learnin’ that you weren’t toys in the attic when he and your mum shoved you into that institution a few years back. Bloody hell, he knew enough to know what _I_ was, enough to go to sodding Wolfram and Hart to keep me off his back. Dunno what they pitched him but it was enough to have him thinkin’ there’s no worse place in the world for the Bit than with you. And how are you gonna fight it, eh? You’re still _dead_ , pet. At least where it counts to these gits.”

Right. She was legally dead—a step that had apparently not been taken in her world. One that had completely escaped her as a possibility. Much like the thought that her father would ever give enough of a damn about either of his daughters to assume parental responsibilities—that he would ever, as her mother had, realize that she hadn’t been lying when she’d gone to them with stories of vampires. And hell, that Spike knew _that_ much…

God, she really loved him, this world’s Buffy. Loved _and_ trusted him. Those were things she’d never told anyone. Not Giles, not even Angel.

“As for the rest,” Spike said, jarring her back to herself. “Doesn’t matter.”

Buffy blinked, not understanding. “What?”

“Same thing as the Nibblet, yeah? About a year old now but I got me a head stuffed full of memories. You do too.” He pressed the tips of his index and middle finger to his temple to emphasize the point. “All in here. That’s where it matters. Don’t know a lot, Slayer, but I know I’m bloody well not living in a world where Buffy doesn’t love me the way I love her. We’re findin’ that sodding paw. Findin’ a way to get you back. Get _her_ back. You can go back to your tidy little world to torture your lovesick whipping boy. This one’ll spin just fine without you.”

Her mind stuttered—everything did. Over the years, Spike hadn’t been shy of hurling words meant to slice and scar. It was one of the things he did best, get under her skin, but not like this. Never before like this. Never about _them_.

She didn’t know what to say except _I’m Buffy_ but that wouldn’t be enough. Not for him.

Spike held her gaze for a long moment, breathing hard as though daring her to contradict him, then broke away in a fury of movement. And in a blink he was in front of her, pressing a coffeepot into her hands.

“Take this to your honey-bear,” he said thickly. “Tomorrow, we tear the bloody shop apart together, yeah?”

She nodded shakily. It was all she could do.

“Right. Then, Slayer, you know the way out.”

He turned his back on her, dismissed her as he never had before, leaving her something less than hollow and completely lost as to how the conversation had gone so badly so fast.

More than that—certain that she couldn’t navigate a world where not even Spike could stand the sight of her.


	9. And I twisted it wrong just to make it right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to bewildered and Kimmie Winchester for their notes and enthusiasm!
> 
> I'd like to say I'm caught up on review replies, but I'm not. The past couple of weeks have been weird. One day I will catch up.
> 
> Oh, and I took a line from _Gone with the Wind_ because it fit the situation too well. Even if I'm not a fan of GwtW.

The coffeepot was obviously not new. Buffy wondered if that were the sort of thing Angel would even notice. Probably not, if Spike hadn’t hesitated to shove it in her hands to get her out the crypt. Whatever else, he was intent on preserving his Buffy’s way of life as much as possible, which included sending her home before the husband could ask too many questions—or maybe that had just been a handy excuse. He hadn’t seemed too interested in keeping her around. If this world’s Buffy had been at his crypt tonight, lost and in crisis, Spike’s tune would have been different.

It was a rather rude awakening, realizing just how much Buffy relied on Spike. The past couple of weeks had been an exercise in denial. The periods she spent alone too full of silence, but not the right sort of silence. A silence that made her feel more dead than alive, but not the right sort of dead, either. The sort where she was always awake, always aware, always feeling the things she didn’t want to feel, thinking the things she didn’t want to think. Her friends made everything worse, and of course she couldn’t tell them that. Couldn’t burden them with the knowledge that they had condemned her to a life that felt like living hell. They wanted those silences filled, her friends did, and they wanted her to do the filling. Be grateful. Smile. Dance. Slay. Play the part of Buffy Summers, pre-mortem.

Spike didn’t expect that—nor did he live in silence. Which was weird, she had to admit, considering he didn’t technically live at all. And that peace, that ability to just be the Buffy she was rather than the Buffy everyone wanted her to be, had become essential to surviving the awful world she’d been thrust back inside.

She’d known—of course she’d known—that telling this world’s Spike the truth about who she was and where she was from would come at the cost of that intimacy they had shared. But part of her also hadn’t known—had held out that Spike, whose devotion to her she’d somehow become dependent upon, would be Spike about everything. Buffy was Buffy, after all. He’d made a robot in her likeness when he couldn’t have the real thing—was it so out there to think that he might just go with the flow? He’d said he loved her, after all, and she knew that love was something Spike took seriously.

Just more seriously than she’d wanted to believe, deep down.

Buffy dragged herself up the familiar steps to her familiar home feeling vaguely like something a truck had run over. She paused at the front door, gave the coffeepot a long look and wondered what she would say if Angel asked her why the hell she’d brought home something clearly used. If she cared enough to lie about it or if she could do this world’s Buffy a solid by pulling the plug on her less-than-fairytale marriage. But then she thought of Spike again and decided it was better to keep the boat unrocked. Regardless of whether or not she’d made this world by wishing it, the people who lived inside of it were real. This Buffy’s life wasn’t one she had the luxury of screwing up.

Spike would help her because he wanted the woman who loved him back. Once that was done and everyone was where they were supposed to be, and with the versions of people they were supposed to be with, the whole thing could come out. Or not. It wasn’t her call.

Buffy drew in a breath and pushed the front door open, then sagged a bit when she saw the living room was dark. Even better—she wouldn’t have to see Angel at all. Just clean the coffeepot and put it in the empty slot. Seeing as she had no experience being the adulterer, the less time she had to devote to coming up with cover stories, the better. Surely this world’s Buffy had it down to an art now, if she and Spike had been sneaking around for nearly a year.

After giving the pot a good scrub, Buffy made her way upstairs, where a rustling from the bedroom informed her that her husband was not out on the town. She wasn’t sure what it said about her that she wished he were—or better yet, that Angel himself was entangled in a steamy affair of his own. Regardless of what Spike had told her, or what she gathered to be this world’s Buffy’s very good reason to emulate her father, the entire concept that she was having an affair was almost harder to reconcile than everything she had learned about Angel. Her mind was crowded with too many memories of finding her mother with swollen eyes and a ready, fake smile. That sick I-just-know-it feeling that she had been forced to accommodate when thinking about the causes of her parents’ divorce. Buffy had never promised herself not to be unfaithful to someone—it had just been a given. Cheating was what bad people did, and Buffy was not bad people.

Also, she thought as she made her way to the bedroom, maybe she shouldn’t trust that Spike’s account of things was entirely accurate. While Angel had been nothing but abrasive with her since she’d arrived, he was also the wronged party. Maybe the reason he seemed to resent her was because he _did_ know about the affair, regardless of what everyone thought. He’d been a detective in LA, after all, and he definitely wasn’t stupid.

He also wasn’t the Angel she thought she knew. Her Angel wouldn’t be lounging on a bed, cleaning his gun.

“I don’t like that thing,” Buffy blurted without meaning to, then winced when Angel started. Right. Because he wasn’t a vampire, hadn’t heard her approach. That would take some getting used to, and frankly, she hoped not to be here long enough for it to stick.

“It’s perfectly safe unless you sneak up on someone while they have it out,” he replied in that terse tone from earlier. He held her gaze for a moment before returning his attention to the firearm. “Guessing it was another banner day at the Magic Box.”

“I didn’t find it,” she said, glad to know what he was referring to.

“That’s a shame.”

Buffy felt her temper creeping up again and did what she could to shove it back down. “I got a new coffeepot. It’s all ready for tomorrow.”

“Great.”

That was all he said, his attention fixed entirely on the gun. She watched the way his hands moved over the metal, how at-ease he seemed with it. This guy who had once balked at her suggestion of adding a television to the mansion he’d called home—made her feel every bit a teenager for even having the thought, much less voicing it. Now he was sitting on a bed they shared in a room that used to be her mother’s, one that had a television—somehow she had missed this in her earlier tour of the house—perfectly positioned for days in which he might want to recline against the headboard while channel surfing.

Maybe addressing the mind-fuck that was their marriage wouldn’t be so horribly intrusive after all. Married people talked about their problems, right? Even if this world’s Buffy was no longer in love with Angel, it couldn’t hurt to open the lines of communication. Maybe it would help both of them get to the place they needed to be in order to officially move on.

“I ran into Anya at the Magic Box,” she said tentatively, stepping farther into the room. “She still seems pretty upset.”

Angel kept his gaze on his handiwork until she was standing across from the bed. The look he gave her was of utter indifference and lasted only as long as it took him to feed her his dismissive reply. “Yeah, well, she’ll get over it.”

Then he bowed his head again, once more fixated on the firearm.

“I don’t think she will,” Buffy pressed on. “She’s furious with Giles…and I can see why. I mean, I was dead for five months and he never bothered to update any of that paperwork?”

He grunted, which could be either commiserative or an indication that he agreed with her. Or just a sound to fill the silence in lieu of an actual response.

“Angel. Can you put the gun down? I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

He sighed, long and tired, his shoulders dropping. “Is it time already?”

“Time for what?”

“This conversation.”

“I’m sorry that talking to your wife is such a chore,” she said with more fire than she intended, but damn, he wasn’t giving her anything.

“We don’t talk, Buffy. _You_ talk. You tell me what I’ve done wrong and get mad when I try to come up with suggestions. Excuse me for not being in the mood for another scolding.”

“Is this really what our life is?” The words were out before she could stop them, but they seemed to do what everything else she’d fired at him hadn’t. At last, Angel was looking at her with something other than annoyance or apathy. She’d actually managed to surprise him. “You clearly don’t want to be here, so why are you?”

“Why am I here?” He blinked at her dumbly. “I’m your husband, that’s why.”

“You’re a widower.”

“You look pretty alive to me.”

“I mean on paper, Angel. On paper, you’re a widower. You made sure that I was dead so you could cash that check the second it came in.”

It felt careless, leaning on information that she’d gotten from Spike, a bit like playing Russian roulette with the truth. There was a second to wonder if she’d spoken in haste, if she should have waited until she had confirmed his version of things with someone with less Angel-bias, but only a second.

Angel rolled his eyes and set the firearm aside. “Okay. So we’re doing this.”

“Excuse me for wanting some answers.”

“No, you just hope I’ll give you one that gets you off the hook.”

“Off the hook? For what, exactly?”

“For the decision I made,” he snapped, springing to his feet with energy that almost seemed vampiric—almost. There was a definite whine in his bones and more looseness in the way his skin moved over muscle. Then there was the breathing—not the breaths he used to take when discussing how much he loved her, but ones of exertion. She knew the difference. “Or the decision I was _going_ to make. The right decision, even if it hurt. I was trying to be strong for both of us. I was trying to keep you alive.”

Buffy blinked. “Keep me alive?”

“But you knew better, didn’t you? ‘Angel, you went away so I could have a normal life with a normal guy.’ ‘Angel, this is everything we wanted.’ ‘Angel, I thought you loved me.’ Like walking away wasn’t torture enough. Like I _didn’t_ feel that pain every day we were apart.” He stared at her for a moment as though daring her to tell him otherwise, then broke away, shaking his head. “The Oracles told me you’d die if I stayed human. I knew that and you did too. But you talked me out of doing the right thing, and look what happened.”

The Oracles had told him what? Who were the Oracles? Buffy frowned, her temples beginning to throb, a new avalanche of questions surging against the edges of her mind, uncaring that she was already buried in what she’d learned. But everything in this world seemed to stem back to that visit to LA, the one that in her memory had been painful and brief. Uneventful, save to reopen a wound she’d done a lousy job of letting heal in the first place.

“I would have died anyway,” she muttered. “Glory was always going to come after me. Always.”

“We don’t know that,” Angel shot back, still all fire. “If I’d had the strength I had as a vampire, I could have stopped it. I could have stopped all of that.”

Yeah, maybe. Only he hadn’t. Buffy had been in the fight of her life and Angel had shown up once to steal a few kisses between LA adventures as a consolation prize for her mother being six feet under. To his credit, she was pretty sure he’d offered to stay and she’d been the one to turn him down…but she was also pretty sure that offer hadn’t been made in earnest. Rather the sort of thing one said to someone who was grieving— _if there’s anything I can do to help, if there’s anything you need,_ and a bunch of other platitudes meant as silence-fillers. Because she had asked Angel to stay. She’d begged him to stay. She’d stood there in the sewer as he broke her heart right before she went to war, and he’d told her that it was better if they weren’t together. And believing that had been such a part of her identity that Angel hadn’t even had to pretend to make the offer for real. He’d said it knowing perfectly well that he wouldn’t have to do anything to follow through. Knowing, apparently, that something large enough to cause her death was on the horizon and doing diddly with a side of squat to help her. Or hey, even give her a warning. Native American spirits crash her Thanksgiving, that warrants an in-person stalking. Oracles warn she is on a fast track toward death and not even a cursory heads-up.

And Angel was also being disingenuous. Whatever problems their marriage had predated the swan dive, since the affair definitely did. If nothing else, seeing the crypt as Spike had it now had her convinced that his version of their relationship was more or less true. Of the things he might have gotten wrong, that clearly wasn’t one of them.

“Things started falling apart well before Glory,” Buffy said.

Angel didn’t argue—just stared. In her book, that was as good as an admission.

“But that was just the cherry, wasn’t it?” she went on, not sure what sort of point she was trying to make but sensing—feeling—she was in the right.

“What?” he asked.

“You being a vampire never mattered to me. Not like it should have. Even after everything you put me through, I loved you. Would have done anything to make it work.” Buffy took a step forward. “It didn’t matter to me, but it mattered to you. It always mattered to you.”

“Well, it had to matter to one of us.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said at the time.”

“And I meant it,” Angel ground out. “It had to matter. One of us had to think with a clear head. Do you think I liked it? Do you think I wanted to walk away?”

“But you were going to again. You turned human and you wanted to turn back.”

“To keep you alive.”

“Maybe that’s what you told yourself.”

Angel went quiet, the muscles in his neck strained and his jaw clamped so tight it was a wonder it didn’t shatter. “You’re talking about a decision I _didn’t_ make more than two years ago. I didn’t go through with it, did I? For all the good it _didn’t_ do, I didn’t go through with it.”

“And you wish you had.”

“You’re damn right I do,” he barked without hesitation. “And so do you. We’ve been pretending this last year that we didn’t make a mistake, but we’re not fooling anyone, especially not each other. I had a _destiny_ , Buffy. I was supposed to do something. The Powers kept me alive, sent me emissaries and put me on a path, and I gave that up because I was too weak to say no to you. So how do I spend my days? I could be out there making a difference, doing some good, helping in the fight, but I can’t do that so I fill my hours with junk TV and think about everything I gave up so that I could be with you. And you stopped loving me a long time ago.”

“Angel—”

“Do you really think I don’t see that? That you still hold what happened with Faith over my head? You started pulling away after that. And then your mom and Dawn and everything with Glory, I became more and more obsolete, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. You stopped loving me when things became real.” There was menace in his eyes, as though he were daring her to look away. “When you realized, underneath it all, this is all I am. You had this idea of the way things would be and when that didn’t pan out, you checked out of this marriage.”

Buffy’s heart flipped at the same time her stomach dropped. “Checked out of this marriage how?”

“You know how,” he replied coolly. “A little more each day.”

She thought he’d elaborate, but he didn’t, rather stopped abruptly and shoved her into one of the louder silences of her life, all the things he’d said ringing in her head. The explanations Spike had given her earlier tonight unmasked as truths and not just conjecture. Buffy stared at him and he stared right back, and for the first time the thought crossed her mind that maybe she’d had it wrong, and she had never known Angel at all. It was ugly, that thought, upsetting and abrasive, and she wanted so badly to hold onto the belief that it was this world that was wrong—that the Angel here wasn’t the Angel she knew—but the argument wasn’t as convincing as it had been. She could see the path now, the one separating her Angel from this one. How he would feel shut out of the world, out of sorts and out of place, with nothing but the memory of what he’d once been capable of. Watching as her world grew more complicated and unable to be a part of it, no matter how hard she tried to tell him he already was.

Or perhaps with Faith’s shadow over everything, even that had been a lost cause. Because Spike was right there too. It had hurt with Riley. With Angel, it would have devastated.

“So why don’t you leave?” Buffy asked a moment later, her voice rougher than she would have liked. “Why are you still here?”

“Where am I gonna go?” Angel replied solemnly. “Where else is there for me?”

“Wherever you were while I was dead. Come on, Angel. You had a plan. You knew death was my gift and you prepared to cash in.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I had nothing,” he shot back, his eyes flaring once more. “No identity, no social security number, no footprint of any kind as a human. You think that was easy to learn overnight? I died before the American Revolution, Buffy. I never had to learn how to be human in this world, with or without a soul. I had to be ready to survive so I was.”

“Well, that makes everything all right, doesn’t it?”

“So, it was irresponsible of me to make preparations for your death when we both knew it was coming?”

“But it wasn’t just my death—it was your escape. Ship Dawn off to Dad, put the house up for sale, pass Go and collect two hundred dollars. Or however much that policy was worth.” A thrill ran down Buffy’s spine and she edged forward a step, feeling increasingly reckless but unable to push the brakes. “So why come back at all? Why bother?”

At that, he looked away, hissing out a long breath. “Because it felt like I should be here if you were, considering what I gave up to be with you.” A pause. “Do you think I like this? Any of it? It was supposed to be easy, you and me. We were supposed to be easy, or we fooled ourselves into thinking we were. But the truth is… God, Buffy, the truth is everything _was_ clearer when you were gone. Like I could be somebody—anyone.”

The backs of her eyes burned and that awful heaviness she couldn’t seem to outrun settled on her chest once more. It would have been better if he’d remained hostile and defensive, if he hadn’t cracked and given her a glimpse of a past that didn’t seem so far removed from the world she came from. That he sounded so defeated, resigned, made everything worse. Instead of her own heartbreak, she had his now, too. His disappointment that they weren’t what they’d thought they’d be outside of what they were. The miserable truth that all they’d ever had to hold them together was the impossibility of their being together in the first place.

Maybe there had been no peace with Angel, and that was the reason that seeing him had left her feeling so empty.

“I thought about getting turned again,” he went on. “Calling Willow, telling her to be ready to do the curse. Put things back the way they were supposed to be.”

Buffy drew in a sharp breath. The blows just kept coming. “Why didn’t you?” she asked hoarsely.

He was studying his hands now, carefully avoiding her gaze. “I don’t know.”

“And now?”

A beat. Then another. Then he exhaled, and all of him seemed to deflate. “I don’t know. Guess I’m waiting for you to figure out what it is you want.”

“What I want?”

“I gave up my destiny for you, Buffy. That puts you in charge of it.” He sighed and again, shuffling back toward the bed. “You don’t love me, but you won’t admit it. You won’t admit any of this was a mistake. You keep holding on. I don’t know if it’s guilt or just you being you. It can’t just be me, though. You need to give me the respect of your honesty. Or hell, tell me this is all in my head. Tell me I’ve had it wrong and you do love me, after all. Tell me one or the other. Tell me _something_.”

Tell him something. That seemed simple enough. Only there was nothing to tell—nothing she could tell, anyway, without possibly screwing up things even more than she already had. Just standing here, asking questions that might have been asked before, having a conversation that this world’s Buffy and Angel had had a thousand times, as far as she knew. Or if they hadn’t, unraveling the fabric of their relationship even further, a step that this world’s Buffy hadn’t taken on her own just yet, whatever her reason.

Or perhaps she could tell Angel the truth of who she was. Let him know how strange this was for her, that in the world she’d come from he hadn’t stayed human. His destiny, if destiny what it was, had remained unimpeded, and the last time they’d seen each other, it had been a somber experience. That she’d gone to him because the last man she could remember loving was Angel and she’d wanted—needed—to feel something like that again, even if only for a few minutes.

But she hadn’t felt that at all. That had been the problem.

There was also the fact that telling Angel the truth didn’t seem safe. At least not right now. She didn’t know where that thought came from, only that it was less a thought and more an instinct, and Buffy had learned long ago to trust her instincts.

The only person she felt safe around was Spike.

Buffy released a slow breath, her gaze landing on the gun. “I can’t stay here.”

“What?” Again, he seemed surprised, though she wasn’t sure why. She was having a hard time picturing them cuddling beside one another to go to sleep.

“I need to go.” She headed toward the bed, hoping that enough of her world remained in this one that she’d find what she wanted beneath it. And she did—the same suitcase she’d taken with her to LA. Seemed oddly fitting to use it again now, running from Angel rather than running from her grief over losing him. The rest she did on autopilot, moving about the room as though she knew where everything was, and maybe her body did, because she found whatever she was looking for on the first try. Underwear, bras, socks, jeans and workout pants, blouses and tees. Angel watched her move, watched her disappear into the bathroom and return with a selection of toiletries and deodorant, but made no attempt to stop her.

Buffy remained in motion until she was at the door. There, she paused long enough to look over her shoulder, bring her gaze to his one last time. She didn’t know what she expected—anger or frustration or perhaps, impossible as it seemed, for him to fall to his knees and beg her to stay. But he didn’t, of course, because that wasn’t Angel. Not this one, anyway. It wasn’t her, either.

The look on his face was one of deep resignation, almost disappointment. She couldn’t say she blamed him.

She should say something. Apologize, tell him where she’d be or when she’d be back, that this wasn’t his fault—not entirely, at least—and she had some thinking to do. But opening her mouth was as far as she got. Words wouldn’t come. And the longer she stood there, the worse it became. It being _everything_.

So, at length, she turned, fixed her eyes dead ahead, and started for the stairs.

* * * * *

She really hadn’t meant to end up back here. With the money this world’s Buffy apparently had at her disposal, it would be nothing to check into the Sunnydale Inn for a few days. She had all the necessary things—purse with wallet, ID, and a bank account that wasn’t hemorrhaging—and still, she’d be easy enough to find if something went way wrong. Or, in her case, wronger.

Going to a motel made sense.

What didn’t make sense was standing outside of Spike’s crypt, gripping her suitcase like she was ready for a sleepover.

But this was where her feet had carried her and even though she knew she wasn’t wanted, Buffy found herself unable to move. The only place she’d felt remotely like herself since she’d landed in this reality was that crypt, and—she had a sinking feeling—not only because it was bedecked with all the hallmarks of home.

“Walk away,” she muttered to herself, as though that would encourage her legs to work. “You’re not the Buffy he wants.”

The crypt door swung open at that with an intrusively loud whine, and Spike leaned against the doorway, wearing a button-up shirt that was mostly unbuttoned and cradling a glass tumbler filled with amber liquid. He looked a little bleary-eyed, resigned but unsurprised at seeing her there.

“Back so soon, are we?” he drawled, flashing her a drunken grin. “Miss me already?”

Buffy opened her mouth, closed it, then tightened her grip on her suitcase. “I couldn’t stay there.”

“’S that so?”

“Spike, you’re drunk.”

“’M _very_ drunk,” he agreed, pushing himself off the stone entryway to swagger forward. “And I intend to get even drunker. Don’t stand there catchin’ flies, now. You comin’ in or what?”

Her heart leaped, though she tamped down on her relief before she could get too far ahead of herself. “You practically threw me out earlier. Told me to go home.”

“Like you ever do what you’re told, Slayer.” He waggled his brows and flashed her a bit of tongue. “Only a matter ‘f time before you came crawlin’ back to me.”

Something deep inside her twinged—the same something he’d stoked last night. Buffy’s throat tightened. “Th-that’s not what this is.”

“No?”

“I should go to a motel.”

“An’ spend my lady’s dosh? Got a bed you could cozy up in downstairs.” There must have been something on her face, for the lavish leer on his vanished and he backed up a step, bringing up both hands, making the contents of his tumbler swish. “Not gonna touch you, ‘f that’s your worry. Look the part and smell just as sweet but you’re not my girl.”

Buffy swallowed, not quite willing to admit the falling sensation was disappointment. “You seemed to want me gone earlier.”

“Not gone.” Spike was stumbling toward her again, and in seconds, he was close enough that his scent was in her nostrils. It was a nice scent, what she could get that wasn’t alcohol vapor, that was. “Jus’…hard to look at you, innit, when it’s not you. When ‘s not…” He released a trembling sigh, somewhat slouched forward so that his brow was pressed to hers. “God, I miss you, baby. It’s eatin’ at me.”

Her eyes were suddenly stinging, her lungs fighting harder for oxygen. The pang in her chest intensified, bolstered by both guilt and hurt. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it more than she ever had in her life. “I’m so sorry for all of this.”

Spike pulled back, his eyes fluttering shut. He had nice eyes, she realized, and long lashes. “Know it,” he said, looking at her again. “’S all right. We’ll suss it out, you and I. But best get you some kip.”

She nodded, and when he placed his hand on her elbow and nudged her forward, she didn’t hesitate. No sense checking a gift horse’s mouth. Whether or not a sober Spike would approve of his drunk counterpart’s decision-making was a question for tomorrow. At the moment, Buffy was just grateful to have a place where she could breathe, if only for a little while.

She would worry about tomorrow when tomorrow came.


	10. I know it seems that I don't care. But something in me does, I swear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday, all.
> 
> For starters—many, many thanks to bewildered, Kimmie Winchester, and Niamh on this (and especially) the following chapters. They have been a bit difficult to write, but I’m getting to the other side of them.
> 
> Secondly… I have officially decided to write what’s going on with this world’s Buffy during our girl’s stay in her world. It likely won’t come until I near the end of this story, as I want it to read more as a companion piece (but also a stand-alone for anyone who skips this fic) and I also don’t want to give away what happens to our girl before it happens. So that’s officially on the writing schedule, as are a slew of ficlets/one-shots I’d like to set in the Paraworld, mostly with stuff that’s already been covered in Spike’s recap of their history, but I’m intrigued enough by the _how_ that I want to write it out.
> 
> Thirdly… the next three chapters are brutal—particularly Chapters 12 & 13\. My threshold for brutal might be wimpy compared to some, granted, but it’s brutal on me and my betas have echoed the sentiment. I’m warning you now so you can prepare. New warnings to the fic will be added starting with Chapter 12, so keep an eye out for those. But also take comfort in the fact that I’ve never written without an HEA in mind.
> 
> Thank you, everyone, for your response to this fic thus far. You are awesome.

Buffy awoke to a tingling neck. _Vampire_ , her senses screamed at her, forcing her to instant alertness. She jerked and sat up—or tried to. There was an arm around her middle, an arm pulling her firmly against a cool, solid chest. It took a moment, but the time delay separating drowsiness from conscious thought caught up with her, and she remembered where she was. More importantly, where she wasn’t.

She was with Spike. Specifically, in Spike’s bed. And Spike was curled around her. He hadn’t started out that way—had shifted about as close to the edge of the mattress as he could get without falling off. If he’d been a bit more sober, she suspected he would’ve opted for somewhere else, but drunk Spike had been rather blasé about sharing the same space.

Apparently, though, he was a cuddler. He hadn’t warned her about that.

Buffy released a slow breath, relaxing almost against her will, then turned her attention to what she could see of her surroundings. She hadn’t had much occasion to snoop around the lower level of the crypt unless one counted looking for a certain peroxide pest to make sure he completely understood that they were never going to be a thing. In truth, Buffy didn’t remember all that much about the layout. The previous visit hadn’t been a social call—or it had, but one with a business-like bend.

But that was in the other world. Her real one. The one where Spike loved her but hadn’t said as much since she’d been back. Not with words, at least. His actions were a love letter all on their own. There was also the way he smiled whenever she showed up at his crypt at sundown—typically _right_ at sundown these days. That wasn’t an accident, though she tried to play like she wasn’t waiting for nightfall. Like she had started patrolling early and found her way to his crypt before anything could leap out at her from the shadows.

Now, a world away and in the arms of another Spike, with her resistance worn down and everything around her in tatters, she could admit what she hadn’t before—that she was playing a dangerous game. Like eyeing a particularly decadent piece of cheesecake in a bakery window, knowing she would regret the calories but not the taste. Spike had wiggled his way into her head and made himself at home, refusing to budge no matter how hard she tried to shove him out.

How had it happened for this world’s Buffy? Spike had filled in the gaps, told her everything she needed to know to navigate this reality, but like the mouse in the children’s book, she wanted more. She wanted to hear the conversations she’d missed, watch their relationship shift from mortal enemies to begrudging allies to full-fledged confidants. She wanted to see that moment Spike had mentioned, the night at the Bronze with Anya’s trollish ex. It had been an unremarkable evening as far as she remembered—earned her the weapon of a god, though, so bonus—but to the Spike currently wrapped around her, it had been a milestone. Then the fight that had evidently had this world’s Buffy throwing in the proverbial towel before throwing _herself_ at him. She wondered how Spike had reacted, if his eyes had gone wide, if he’d gasped her name, or if he’d just surrendered without missing a beat, shoved her against whatever surface was nearest, and given her something to sing about.

Suddenly, that was all she could see—Spike pushing her up against a mausoleum, tearing hot kisses from her mouth as he hiked her skirt up her hips before fumbling with his belt and fly. Herself gasping into his mouth, linking her legs around his waist and telling him to hurry, hurry, hurry, both because she needed it and because she wanted him to beat the second thoughts she knew would come. Before she changed her mind, before she realized what she was doing, let him be inside of her so she could remember what it was like to be loved and desired. To be with someone who understood her, truly understood her, in ways no one else ever had. Not even the man she’d thought she’d love forever.

Buffy closed her eyes, trying and failing to ignore the rising heat between her legs. Might have been easier had she not known exactly what he felt like, how well he filled her, how he moved, how he fucked. The things he’d said between breaths, how he’d touched and kissed and loved her all the while pounding her against the closet wall. There had been no in-between, which was something she hadn’t experienced before. Riley had always been about sweet and tender lovemaking. On occasion, he might follow her lead and give it to her harder, but overall, he’d been an old-fashioned sort.

God, that had been annoying. But worth it, it had seemed at the time, to have something steady and reliable.

No wonder that relationship hadn’t worked. She’d spent her evenings getting her rocks off the only way she could without investing in a vibrator and furthering the divide between them.

That wouldn’t be a problem with Spike. He fucked the way he fought, with everything he was and then some. He’d asked her how she’d wanted it, then understood her answer when she hadn’t been able to verbalize it. There would be nights when she wanted it soft and sweet, all about sensation and indulgence, and he’d give that to her, too. She was beginning to think there was little in this world he wouldn’t give her if she had the presence of mind to ask.

Behind her, as though sensing the path her thoughts had taken, Spike released a low, rumbling purr and tightened the hold he had on her. Then his hand began to wander, skating up her stomach until he had a breast cupped against his palm.

“Slayer,” he murmured into her hair before flicking his tongue around her earlobe. “Mmm. Have I told you how much I love it when you stay over? Best bloody way to wake up.”

She liked to think she would have said something had he not chosen that moment to thrust his hips against her so she could feel just how much he meant that. But he did thrust, and she felt him, hard and insistent against her ass, even with the denim that separated them. The need that had begun to fester skyrocketed on impact, soaking her panties and bringing every inch of her to life.

She hadn’t gotten to see him after he’d found her at the Bronze. Hadn’t had the chance to satisfy the questions regarding his anatomy she hadn’t wanted to admit she’d had. If he had the length and girth to back up several years’ worth of tease and innuendo… Though, she supposed that wasn’t true. Seeing wasn’t necessarily believing when she’d had him inside of her and knew firsthand just how large he was. But seeing was still _something_ and she wanted to see.

Wanted to do more than see, if she were being honest.

But the opportunity was gone before she could think about seizing it. One second, Spike was peppering her neck with kisses, rolling his hips and teasing her nipple through her shirt—the next he froze, and she knew he remembered.

“Bugger,” he muttered, dropping his hand and rolling onto his back. She wasn’t prepared for how cold she felt at his absence. “Sorry for that. Takes me a mo’ to wake up properly. Won’t happen again.”

She nearly sobbed in frustration, pressing her thighs together. “I…didn’t mind,” she managed, hoping she didn’t sound as pathetic as she felt.

He didn’t reply at first. Didn’t need to. He was a vampire, after all. He could probably smell just how little she’d minded being groped. A different Spike, a different situation, she could hear what he’d say about that. All the tease and push and shove until she had no choice but to punch him or kiss his infuriating lips off. The idea that she’d ever be in a bed with Spike and he’d be the one to pull the brakes would have seemed impossible just seventy-two hours ago. Now it was her reality, and she didn’t like it.

“Spot of good news for the bloke back in your world, I expect,” Spike replied at last. The mattress dipped and whined with movement, and she felt, rather than saw, him sitting up so his back was pressed against the headrest. “If he’s been hungry for you as long as I wager he has, he’ll be chuffed to hear you’re ready to put yourself on the menu.”

Her heart did a little jig. Buffy twisted so she could see him, did her best not to react to finding him sans shirt—she’d known he wasn’t wearing one but the visual was a bit more than her sleepy-and-now-horny brain could handle—and focused instead on his words. “What?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Tellin’ me you’re not?”

“You think I’m gonna go back to my world and…what, start boinking Spike?”

“Any reason why you shouldn’t? Doubt you got a steady fella over there if you were so quick to jump on my cock the other night and still act high-and-mighty about my Slayer’s regard for her wedding vows.”

Heat rose to her cheeks. Spike, since the whole love declaration thing and especially since she’d come back from the dead, had been a bit more subdued around her. There was a strong undercurrent of want and desire, of course, but he’d stopped being so painfully blunt about things. Stopped molding words into weapons, intentionally or unintentionally. The difference hadn’t been obvious to her until right now, with Spike staring at her the way he was. Not saying things she wanted to hear or things that would endear him to her in some way—treating her the way he had before he’d loved her, or at least before he’d known it.

“It’s wrong,” she said, the words flat in a rehearsed sort of way even she could hear.

“Is it?”

“You don’t have a soul.”

“Yeah, ’cause souls do so much bloody good.” He rolled his eyes and reached over to the stand he had propped on his side of the bed. The next second, a lighter flicked and the scent of cigarettes filled the air. “Mean to tell me the reason that poor sod on your side’s had nothin’ but his hand since losin’ his heart to you is because you’re fixed on a standard bloody Angel set? Fuck, why don’t you just stake the bastard? It’d be kinder.”

“That’s not fair,” she said, also sitting up now, letting the sheet pool around her hips. She hadn’t undressed last night when they’d come in, so she was wearing the clothes he’d seen her in the day before, but still somehow managed to feel exposed. Maybe it was the conversation. “And how can you say that? When Angel lost his soul, he made your life miserable too.”

“Yeah, and before that we were best bloody chums.” Spike snickered and took a puff off his cigarette. “Pillock’s had his sodding soul for three years now and each day has been torture.”

“Because you’re in love with me. I mean Buffy. And she’s married to him.”

“You think that’s all it is?” he retorted, his eyebrows shooting up. “Got a sight more history with him than you do. Since the moment I clawed outta my bloody grave, he’s been mucking things up for me. Fuck, that’s what he likes. Throwin’ around his weight, tellin’ others what to do, bein’ the big bloody man. Used to come over here to knock me around ’cause he knew he could.”

Buffy pressed her lips together. Spike had alluded to as much the night before when he’d been in storyteller mode but he hadn’t come back to it—the idea that Angel would beat him up just because he knew he couldn’t hit back. The thought had been uncomfortable for numerous reasons, including the fact that she could easily see it.

“All in the name of a good cause, mind,” Spike went on, his tone ironic. “Gather information and the like. Take somethin’ off your to-do list. Pretend he was bein’ helpful or what all. Truth was he needs to feel powerful and power’s cheap when no one’s punching back. Same reason he bought the bloody leng, isn’t it?”

“The what?”

“The gun, pet. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen it.” He flicked his eyebrows at whatever he saw on her face and nodded. “Way my lady tells it, he gets that thing out every sodding night to give it a good polish. Suppose when power’s what gets you off, that’s more fulfillin’ than beatin’ the bishop. Never mind he’s never pulled the trigger once. Just knowin’ he _can_ is all that matters.”

Buffy didn’t say anything—she had no argument for that. Or anything he was saying, really. The line in her head had been so solid for so long where souls were concerned, having had a front-row seat to what damage a man could do without one. And Spike had been a part of that, too. Before he’d been chipped and even after, he’d found ways to sneak in his evil however he could. Though, at some point the previous year, he’d stopped trying to flaunt his evil and started doing whatever he could to score points with her. The fact that Angel had gone off to Sri Lanka after her death whereas Spike had stayed to guard the Hellmouth in her absence, protect her sister, really spoke for itself. In this reality, Angel had shipped Dawn off to her father. In her reality, he’d decided to take a vacation rather than stick around and help protect what Buffy had given her life to defend.

If she managed to get back to her reality, could she say for certain that things with her Spike would remain the same? She tried to picture it—snapping back to the moment in the Magic Box, breaking the time loop somehow. Giles and Anya upstairs, going about their day as though nothing remarkable had happened. Giles wouldn’t understand the reason Buffy threw herself at him in a hug the second she saw him alive and well. Dawn wouldn’t get it, either. And Spike?

Her throat tightened. Back in a world with a Spike who looked at her with open devotion and longing, who gave her the quiet moments she craved and filled all the others? Knowing firsthand that he was the one constant between realities, understood her even when she defied explanation? Then there was the knowledge that, whatever else, she was absolutely capable of loving Spike. Whether or not this world had been pieced together by the wish she’d sent into the universe or had been here all along, the fact remained that this world’s Buffy was more than just sleeping with the enemy. If sex were all it was, there would be no reason for Spike to feel guilty for not having realized he was screwing the wrong Buffy.

“I don’t know,” she said at last, her voice hoarse. “I don’t know what’ll happen when I see you—him again.”

Spike nodded, lifted a shoulder as though to say it didn’t matter. The more time she spent with him, the more she noticed him doing things like that. Shrugging or waving off things as inconsequential when they were anything but. She wondered about that, too. That this Spike, who would have his Buffy back if things went well, cared about the fate of another Spike. One whose path would never cross with his, god willing. Or maybe he didn’t, and she was seeing things that weren’t there. Somehow, though, she didn’t think so.

“Wastin’ daylight, Slayer,” Spike said in that firm way that indicated the previous conversation was over. “Sooner we get to the shop, the sooner we send you home, yeah?”

Buffy blinked, shook her head to clear it. “Wasting daylight? What time is it?”

“Reckon around one, maybe two.”

“What?” In her life, she didn’t think she’d ever slept past noon. Even recently, when fighting her way out of bed every morning was more of a struggle than her patrols. She threw her legs over the side of the mattress and sprang to her feet. “How in the world did we sleep so late?”

“Late? Mite early for yours truly,” Spike replied, sounding amused now.

“Well, it’s super late for me.” Buffy fluffed out her hair and straightened her clothing. She needed a shower—a consideration she hadn’t made when her feet had pointed her in the direction of Spike’s crypt last night. Definitely a plus in the _motel_ column. If she decided not to return home tonight, it might be better for both their sakes to book a room.

Though as soon as she had the thought, the rest of her started rebelling. She decided not to examine that too closely.

“Do you have a place where I can splash some water on my face?” Buffy asked.

Spike huffed but didn’t respond, just gestured with his head for her to follow him, which she did. He took her down a length of underground she hadn’t noticed before, around a corner, then to a little alcove that looked like it didn’t belong. Because it didn’t.

It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing. A stretch of bathroom tile had been laid across the ground, encased by sliding doors that apparently fit right inside the walls. There was a mirror hanging above what was unmistakably a sink, situated beside another shelf like the one upstairs, one filled with various Buffy-approved toiletries and a couple of fluffy towels.

“Privy’s here,” Spike said, directing her gaze to a smaller alcove, one fitted with a toilet and one of her mother’s lamps. “Do what you need. I’ll grab some nosh so we can get you fed before we leave.”

“I… How is this… Spike, how did you do this?”

“Do what?”

“This is… _insane._ You have a fully functional bathroom down here?”

“Yeah…” He looked confused. “Got tired of the Slayer needin’ to take off early so she could wash up or what all. Nights she gets to spend with me, which aren’t many, I want her here as long as she can stay.”

“So you hijacked a Bed, Bath, and Beyond? How does this even work?”

“Know a few blokes who know other blokes who are bloody pathetic card players.” Spike offered another one of those _it’s no big deal_ shrugs. “And Harris pitched in, too.”

“What? _Xander_? I thought no one knew—”

“Didn’t know it was for you. Don’t be daft. Just threatened to break in and use his shower whenever I fancied. Fed him some rot about havin’ gotten used to hot water when we were bunkmates and how I might just let myself in sometime when he was at work.” At that, he grinned. “Also mighta said somethin’ about hopin’ his sex-obsessed girl wasn’t around then. Show her a thing or two about what she was missin’ having settled for a human. He caught her gawkin’ at me when I had my shirt off enough times for that one to stick.”

Buffy crossed her arms, not sure why the idea of Spike hitting on Anya made her stomach twist. “So…you have hot water.”

“Not much you can’t do when you set your mind to it, Slayer. Pipes are connected all over, aren’t they? All goes somewhere. And I’ve been in the habit of providin’ for my lady for over a century now. That doesn’t switch off just because the woman I love comes with a pulse.” Now he was rubbing the back of his head as though embarrassed. “Well, go on and wash up or whatever you fancy.”

And without another word, he turned on his heel and disappeared back down the tunnel, leaving her staring at the impossible set-up. Last night, she’d marveled at the way he had the upstairs decorated, fixed with things that would make a crypt feel like something other than a crypt. Her mother’s things, and Buffy’s too, along with the shelf-full of her favorite foods—all the things she’d need if she wanted to stay here long term. That he might have a bathroom, complete with a shower with hot water, was one of those possibilities that had never crossed her mind. It had just been ludicrous.

For the second time in as many hours, Buffy found herself thinking about the first thing Angel had ever said on the subject of Spike—that once he set his mind on something, he didn’t stop. Never stopped. She didn’t know why her mind kept taking her back there, except perhaps that it had always seemed strange to her that Spike _had_ stopped at some point. Stopped trying to get the chip out, stopped scheming with Big Bads, stopped being evil in the ways that mattered and dedicated himself to…what? Loving her?

She shivered and rubbed her arms, then moved forward and started undressing. It felt strange, getting naked in a tunnel, but not as strange as it should. While she’d only intended to wash her face and maybe her underarms, the prospect of a full shower was something that she found her body very much wanted. And, she had to admit, she was curious about how well all the plumbing worked. If they managed to find the paw at the Magic Box, odds were good she’d never get another chance, so when in Rome.

Buffy had just stripped off her bra when the sound of approaching footsteps reached her ears, and without thinking, she whirled around in time to flash Spike as he rounded the corner.

“Thought you might want this,” he said, holding up the suitcase and not reacting at all to her nudity. “Unless you aim to walk back in the altogether.”

“Spike!” Buffy threw an arm over her breasts and splayed her other hand over her nether regions. “A little warning, maybe?”

He blinked at her as though only just then realizing she wasn’t dressed. Then a look that was so thoroughly _Spike_ crossed his face that she had both the urge to punch him and sag with relief. This Spike—one who smirked—was one she knew. Like the night before, catching glimpses of him went a long way in reassuring her that he was the same guy, just with softer edges. Or maybe not even that. He was used to not being on his very best behavior around her, not trying too hard to catch her attention or make himself look better than he was.

This might be the most honest Spike she’d ever been with.

“Slayer,” he said, his voice rumbling with amusement, “nothin’ I haven’t seen, stroked, or licked many, many times. Got no bloody secrets from me.”

“It’s different.”

“Uh huh. And where was all this virtue night before last when I was eating your juicy cunt?” Still smirking, he strode forward and placed her suitcase beside the sink. “Been inside you too, in two places. Can still see my fang marks. No need to be modest on my account.”

Maybe not to him, but Buffy wasn’t accustomed to parading around him naked. It spoke of vulnerability, intimacy, that felt awkward on her shoulders. But there wasn’t a good way to say that—at least not one that came to mind just then—so she didn’t bother trying, just gave a sort of half-shrug and hoped that spoke for all the things she couldn’t.

He saw it, too. She watched him see it and understand it, as well as the moment when he decided he wouldn’t pursue the matter. Instead, he offered a short nod, brought his hands up and backtracked toward the opening of the alcove.

Buffy released a deep breath and dropped her shoulders, feeling a combination of things she’d rather not. But there wasn’t any time to linger. If all went well, she’d be home before her mind dragged her back to this place, and with a Spike who wasn’t as much of an enigma to her as this one was.

* * * * *

“You might’ve been right.”

“Gonna have to be a sight more specific there, ducks. I’m right about a fair number of things.”

Buffy resisted the urge to roll her eyes, half a dozen examples to the contrary immediately springing to mind. Examples she wasn’t at liberty to use because she had no history with this particular version of Spike. “Angel,” she said, sidestepping a rather large puddle of yuck. The sewers were not her preferred method of travel, but, as Spike said, friendlier to him than the alternative. Plus, he knew a direct way into the basement of the Magic Box, and since they wanted everything set to rights sooner rather than later, it made more sense for them to avoid situations where she might be spotted by someone taking a daytime stroll with the resident undead.

They’d set off from the crypt after a rather tense breakfast. Well, tense on her end, at least, battling thoughts and feelings she shouldn’t have. Spike had seemed rather unbothered by everything that had happened since they’d woken up, from the impromptu sleep groping to catching her naked and ready to hop into the shower. He’d had a bowl of shredded wheat ready for her when she’d climbed her way back upstairs, two-percent milk and everything, along with a couple of well-buttered pieces of toast. Apparently, she’d missed that he had a toaster among his other kitchen amenities.

She’d eaten without comment, and he’d thrown back a couple of glasses’ worth of blood, and it had felt almost domestic. Sitting there in the crypt, eating one of her staple breakfasts as Spike puttered around, seemingly unaffected by her presence.

Not unaffected, though. Accustomed. Just as he was with walking in on her before she bathed. Hadn’t batted an eye.

That bothered her. Not that she wanted to be ogled by Spike—any Spike—but since discovering he was in love with her, Buffy had held what was probably a way-too-pompous view on how he would react if he ever did see her naked. Yes, she had plenty of self-doubt about her physical appeal…but she also didn’t. There were two parts to her thinking—the one nurtured by years of comparing herself unfavorably to girls she thought were prettier or sexier than she was, and the one that knew she was attractive and had a body that wouldn’t quit. Literally. Not even death could stop it. So, on some level, she had expected Spike to react with something closer to reverence if ever allowed close enough. That he hadn’t even leered at her suggestively made her feel empty. And _that_ made her feel shallow.

“Slayer?” Spike nudged her with his shoulder. “Gonna just tease or were you plannin’ on goin’ somewhere with that?”

Buffy blinked hard and shook her head, forcing her thoughts back to the present. What had she been saying? Oh, right. “You might’ve been right about Angel.”

“Oh, so you’re gonna talk about it, then?”

“About what?”

“You came back to me in a right hurry. Wager the big oaf said somethin’ to set you off.”

“Well, I…I don’t know what I was trying to do when I got there. I just…wanted to talk about it.”

“It being…?”

“Everything you told me.”

Spike’s eyebrows shot skyward.

“Not _all_ of it,” she rushed to clarify. “I just wanted to try to talk, now that I had the full story. I think I wanted to prove you were wrong about him—or my Angel. That they’re different.”

He nodded, a muscle in his cheek ticking. Still, he didn’t look at her, kept his gaze fixed on the stretch of sewer ahead of them. “Yeah?”

“He doesn’t know anything about us. Or you and Buffy. I didn’t tell him anything, at least.”

“Small bloody favor.”

“But I did try to have a conversation with him and…well, I can’t remember how we got there, but I asked him why he’d come back at all and he told me it was because I was the person he gave up being _someone_ for and he felt… I dunno, obligated. Or that he should be with me if I was alive, regardless of what he wanted.”

At that, Spike _did_ look at her, his eyes wide with surprise. “Yeah? Didn’t reckon he’d ever admit it.”

“That’s the thing—he wants me to.” Buffy rubbed her palms along her hips. “He wants Buffy to ‘fess up that the entire thing was a mistake from the start and admit she doesn’t love him anymore and hasn’t for a while. He _also_ decided to tell me that it might’ve been my fault I died because he didn’t have his vampire strength to help stop Glory.”

Spike snickered and shook his head, like any of this was amusing. “Yeah, that’s Angel for you. Thinks the sodding universe revolves around him. Good on you, though. Dunno if I could’ve kept my mouth shut if I knew he hadn’t been any more help to me without a pulse than he was with one. Still died, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” And Angel hadn’t been there. He hadn’t even warned her. That was hard to swallow. “He pretty much told me that he hates being human because it makes it impossible for him to be in my world.”

“Bollocks. Scoobs manage just fine, don’t they?”

Well, yes, but that didn’t sound right. Buffy paused, tugged on his arm to bring him to a stop. “I said the same thing yesterday, about how Xander is just a regular guy but he’s in my world, and you said it was different. Now it’s not?”

He rolled his eyes. “Fuck, Slayer, we really have to do this now?”

“Do what?”

“We’ve had this talk before, you and me. Or not you but _my_ Buffy. Answer’s the same.”

“Answer to what?”

“If it was just Angel or had somethin’ to do with you.”

Her heart clenched and she didn’t know why. “With me?”

“Told you that you need some monster in your man more than once. You’ve asked me what mighta happened if I stumbled across a bloody Mohra demon like your dearly devoted husband.” He let out a breath. “ _Dunno’s_ the honest answer. Lot to figure, isn’t there? How I’d sit with a soul, assumin’ it was a package deal. One thing I’m sure of, though. You.”

“Me?” Buffy echoed, still trying to wrap her mind around the idea of Spike with a soul. Wondering how that would look—how different he’d be. The fact that she couldn’t see any dramatic change just in considering the prospect had her a little unnerved. Maybe a bit politer, less with the hair bleach…but in terms of evilness?

“Wouldn’t be sour because I had my destiny yanked from me,” Spike continued as though he hadn’t just upended her world. “Don’t _want_ to be human, I can tell you that much, but if it happened and I had to stay that way, only know I’d still be yours.”

The certainty in his voice unnerved her even more. “H-how do you know?”

“’Cause I’m not him,” he said. “Wasn’t as a human tosser, either. Always been a bit more of a romantic, I suppose.” Spike sucked in his cheeks and looked away. “Would always wanna be in the thick of it, too. Met me a few decent demon hunters in my day. It’d be a step down, but I’d adjust, so long as it meant keeping you.”

A horrible, familiar sting met her eyes, her heart twisting all over again. “He would’ve said so too.” Perhaps he had—assuming that Angel’s transformation to human and decision to stay that way was the point of divergence between their worlds. If they’d had a day together before he’d gotten cold feet and taken it back. At one point, she had been confident that Angel would have given anything to stay in her life. Only apparently he hadn’t.

“Yeah, well, difference is I actually mean what I say,” Spike said, nodding at the untrekked tunnel ahead of them to indicate they should start moving again. “Only people I ever needed to prove myself to were the people I loved. Didn’t give a right damn about the rest of them.”

Buffy didn’t say anything for a beat, just fell into pace beside him once more. “You can’t know, though,” she said at last. “What you’d do. How you’d react. A soul could change everything.”

He huffed a little as though amused. “Tellin’ you, love, got your thinkin’ all twisted around where that’s concerned.”

“You’re saying you’re not that different than you were before?”

This time he didn’t reply at all, just kept his gaze fixed dead ahead, his jaw tight. And she wondered, as she never had before, exactly what sort of man he had been before he’d been turned. He’d told her very little once upon a time, glossing over the finer points to focus on how grateful he’d been to become a vampire. He’d also said something about society’s rules, being released from those shackles. At the time, she hadn’t been interested enough to ask what he meant by that—what rules he was done with, and had he _ever_ played by any rules at all. He’d told her he’d _always_ been bad, after all. If that were true, why would becoming a vampire make such a dramatic difference?

There was more in what he hadn’t told her, she realized. A lot more.

And that he didn’t see much changing in terms of the way he felt about her meant something, too.

She just didn’t know if she was brave enough to ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The children's book Buffy was referring to when she compared herself to a mouse that wanted more was _If You Give a Mouse a Cookie_. Mentioning that because it wasn't readily apparent to one of my betas. 
> 
> Just so you know, if you give a mouse a cookie, he's gonna want a glass of milk.
> 
> Also, here's a fun fact! Spike uses the word leng as [slang for gun](https://slangpedia.org/slang-for-gun/#:~:text=Leng%3A%20Any%20type%20of%20weapon,or%20someone%20who%20is%20dangerous.&text=Origin%3A%20The%20term%20is%20used%20mostly%20among%20London%20criminal%20underground%20network.). By 2021 standards, it apparently means something very different (like, super sexy). But being that this fic is set in 2001 and Spike's an old vamp, I thought the term was appropriate.


	11. Hope is a bastard. Hope is a liar, a cheat and a tease

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo...Buffy fandom has been in flames the past two days, having what is becoming an unfortunately common reckoning with the fact that a creator of something phenomenal is a piece of human garbage. Truthfully, I've been done with Joss Whedon as a person since his ex-wife's open letter in 2017. At the time, I had been out of fandom for a while and was just dipping my toe back in (it was the 20th anniversary) and the news came as a blow. It wasn't easy but I managed to compartmentalize it and throw Joss in my mental trash bin.
> 
> What Charisma Carpenter shared the other day was shocking and heartbreaking, but also tragically unsurprising. She has discussed the harsh working conditions she endured on the set of Angel for years now, though not in such blatant terms, and rumors about the causes of her departure from the show have been prevalent since the '00s. Amber Benson's corroboration was also tragically unsurprising, and Michelle Trachtenberg's downright horrific. There is more we will likely never know, and more we may well find out in the coming days and weeks. And it is heartbreaking for everyone involved -- the actors who suffered in silence for years, and the fans who have to reconcile what Joss's monstrosity means to them in terms of how they interact with his art.
> 
> I've been wrestling with this for a couple of days now -- both the fact that I am utterly unsurprised and heartbroken at the same time. I've spoken publicly about how Buffy changed my life, and that is not hyperbolic. Buffy fandom is where I grew up as an author. It's where I first discovered I might be able to edit professionally. Everything I have achieved in the world of publication is directly linked to the years I spent writing Buffy stories. The past two years, I've written more in Buffy fandom than I think I have in all the years of publishing original works combined. I'm not sure; I'd have to do a word count comparison. Doing so not only reinvigorated my love of the fandom where I grew up, but my love of writing itself, something I'd managed to lose over the last few years. During the pandemic, my fandom corner has been a refuge. Writing, sharing, and experiencing the world I love so much with others who love it just as much.
> 
> I can't undo what Buffy means to me. I don't want to. I can't undo how being in fandom changed the trajectory of my life. Again, I don't want to. It's personal and profound, and most of it -- the fandom bits -- completely outside of Joss's purview or control. Yes, something beautiful was created by someone vile, and while that knowledge hurts, it doesn't change how the show affected me, my writing, or what the years I've spent in the show's fandom, creating art alongside other fans, has meant to me. If anything, I love the show more than ever because I know what the cast and crew went through in order to give it to us, and how nearly all of them continue to celebrate it with fans 20 years later, despite what they went through behind the scenes. I will not let Joss Whedon take this away from me. SMG said she was proud to be associated with Buffy, but wants to leave Joss behind, and that's where I've landed too. I understand how that might not be possible for some people. Why this might be the straw that breaks Buffy for you, and I'm sorry. You must react in the way that is best for you. 
> 
> For me, the best way is to keep the connections I've built, the stories I've created, and the love of characters who were, in many cases, great in spite of Joss, not because of him. Buffy exists outside of his creation and influence for me and has for many years now. We mourn together, we heal together, and we celebrate the amazing women and men who worked in front of and behind the camera to bring us something magical under terrible circumstances.
> 
> Onto the chapter...
> 
> I am sorry, guys. I am way far behind on comment responses.
> 
> Many thanks to bewildered, Kimmie Winchester, and Niamh for their notes. And as per one of those notes, I need to disclaim something: this story (and season) takes place in the fall of 2001. In other words, after 9/11. Those of you who were alive then might remember that many of our favorite shows made no reference to the terrorist attacks whatsoever, so they might as well have happened in other universes. That was my approach here. Only mentioning it because Para!Giles died in a plane crash and any plane-related incident would've been BIG national news at the time. We're treating it as though it's not.

She gave up before he did. Normal, she supposed. Spike hadn’t had the privilege of searching yet—the nooks and crannies were still new to him, still full of promise. If he felt that sinking in his stomach, the one that came with the voice that whispered it was no good, he didn’t let it show. He was a man determined.

The first time she suggested quitting for the day, he’d acted like he hadn’t heard her, just shoved his way through more of the Magic Box’s inventory and tackled another pile. The second time she’d suggested it, he’d paused long enough to shoot her a mutinous look before shoving the rolling shelf aside and moving to the next. The third time, he’d actually snarled.

“Decided you aim to stay, then?”

“What?”

“Look at you. You call yourself the Slayer? Over here, anyone who goes by the name Buffy Summers doesn’t give up near as fast.” Spike had whipped around then, started going through another shelf. He’d been careful, she’d noticed, not to just upend everything, though she could tell he very much wanted to. Rather, it seemed like he was warring between his desire to get the right Buffy back and the urge to start smashing everything in sight. Or perhaps he had better impulse control than the Spike she knew back home…except she didn’t think it was that, either.

When something mattered to Spike, really mattered, he took the time needed to get it right. Turning over shelves and creating even more of a mess than the one that already existed would do nothing but make the task of finding a monkey paw in an inventory stack even more improbable than it felt at the moment. So, he was being careful, considerate, and other words she would never have associated with Spike prior to right now.

The end result was the same, though. The paw wasn’t there.

“You were holdin’ it. You made your wishes and you were holdin’ the paw.”

She nodded, trying to ignore the growing pain in her head. The one that had set up shop right behind her eyes and seemed to pulse every time she blinked. “I was holding it.”

“And then what?”

“And then I wasn’t holding it anymore, Spike. How many times do you need me to go over this?” She brought her fingers to her temples, squeezing her eyes shut. “It was dark. I was standing here in the dark and I kinda felt my way toward the door. It wasn’t until I got up the stairs that I realized I didn’t have it anymore. I thought I’d dropped it. I decided not to look then because I had no idea what was waiting for me outside and I didn’t trust I’d be able to find my way back to it quickly and I wanted to get out of here to see what my wishes had brought me and because I’d already been down here reenacting _Groundhog Day_ for I don’t _know_ how long. Believe me, if I could go back and kick my own ass, I would. Preferably before I used the damn thing in the first place.”

Her rant was met with silence—a thick sort of silence, one filled-to-bursting. He would start screaming at her any second, she was sure, and then maybe her head would just cave in on itself and she wouldn’t have to worry about paws or wishes or alternate realities anymore. Spike’s increasing desperation was a tangible thing. She would swear it had its own taste and texture because it was starting to overpower her senses.

“Musta not been here, then.”

Buffy whipped her head up and immediately wished she hadn’t for how the room spun. “Huh?”

“Not somethin’ you’d let go of, Slayer.” He sounded certain, which was more than she could say for herself. “’Specially in a situation like this, yeah? Brave new world and all. Your survival depends on you _not_ losin’ your grip, be it on weapons or powerful bits of mojo. One of the reasons the only beastie that was ever bad enough to take you down was you. Problem’s not that you lost it—it’s that it wasn’t ever here to begin with.”

She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until her lungs burned, and she exhaled slowly. The pain in her head seemed to seep out along with the tension she released. Not that the prospect of the paw not being here was necessarily a happy one—on the contrary, it was rather terrifying—but if it _wasn’t_ here, that at least meant that she _hadn’t_ lost it. She might have screwed up more epically than anyone else had ever screwed up in the history of forever, but she hadn’t lost the damn paw.

“Rupert is still kickin’ over on your side,” Spike said, his brow furrowed. “So, he arrives safe and sound after your mates work their mojo. He musta gotten it after he landed.”

“That’s assuming everything went the same over there as it did here.”

He met her gaze, his eyebrows arched. “Sayin’ you think it didn’t? Thought everythin’ else matched up pretty well, yeah?”

“Then why didn’t my Giles die in a plane crash?”

“I dunno, love. Could all come down to when he heard the news that you were back among the living. Maybe he didn’t catch the same flight.”

“Why wouldn’t he have caught the same flight, though?”

“Well, way you tell it, you wandered around town for a bit thinkin’ you were in Hell.” At that, something in Spike’s eyes changed, like he heard the words as he said them, or felt their impact. The lines of his face softened as well—all of him seemed to—and for a moment, he looked more like the Spike she knew. The one who had been her safe harbor since that first horrible night, and her chest twisted.

She missed him. She missed _Spike_. The one who loved her without reservation—who was there for her no matter what. This Spike… He’d said he loved her just by virtue of her being Buffy, but she wasn’t what he wanted, and he’d made that very clear. She wasn’t _welcome_ in his world. She was a problem to solve and send packing.

The Spike who looked at her like she was the answer to every question that had ever been asked—she wanted that Spike back.

God, what did that mean?

Spike cleared his throat and directed his gaze to the floor, shifting his weight from one foot to the next. “Didn’t mean to sound like that, love,” he said. “Someone shoulda been there for you. _I_ shoulda been there for you—your version of me, at least. From the start.”

Buffy blinked, her sinuses burning, and crossed her arms. “You were,” she said, drawn back to the way he’d looked at her when she’d walked down the stairs. The way he’d made her feel alive then, and how she’d spent every moment since in pursuit of feeling that again. “He was, I mean. He didn’t know what was going on. He was trying to protect Dawn and Dawn… I dunno, ran off because she realized that I was alive somewhere. But he started trying to take care of me the second he realized what was going on. Then my friends barged in and chased him off.”

Something else flashed across his face. “That’s it, then,” he said. “Buffy stayed with me that first night. She didn’t go see her mates until after. Bloody good thing, too. Had a rough night. Some beastie—”

“The spell made a monster.”

He nodded. “Sussed out that it was somethin’ happenin’ to her, and we couldn’t fight it, so we had to tell the others that she was back. Witches did some hocus pocus, my lady went into action and down went the beastie. Not sure how long after they called your watcher but coulda been enough. Seems likely, though, that he got lucky where you come from. Took a different flight, or what all.”

But that would mean there had been a plane crash in her world, which _didn’t_ seem likely. She would have known. It would’ve been in the paper or on the news, right?

Though how much attention had she given the news as of late? Buffy frowned, furrowing her brow. The pain behind her eyes was pulsing again, harder than before. In truth, just getting from one moment to the next had consumed all her energy; there hadn’t been room for much in her head beyond the things she needed to keep there in terms of her own survival. Survival itself being something she wasn’t sure she wanted but she felt obligated to work toward that end regardless.

It was possible she had missed something about a plane crash. Perhaps Giles had been the only casualty with ties to Sunnydale, which would have relegated it to a tragedy that had happened Somewhere Else and therefore, while sad, was outside her purview.

“So, he got it while he was here,” Buffy muttered. “Not before. Or maybe he brought it with him.” Though that didn’t make sense, either. Learn that your surrogate daughter is once again among the living and book a quick flight to California, but be sure to bring along a dark object with the intent to destroy it when he had a free moment? No, more likely the monkey’s paw had been an acquisition made after he’d landed. “The lawyers you mentioned think Giles had it. Why else would I be looking for it here?”

Spike nodded, breathed out again, and settled his hands on his hips in a pose she’d seen a thousand times, the lapels of his duster bunching back to reveal his waistline. “Might be time, love.”

“Time for what?”

“To do what you—the other you—has been avoidin’.” He met her gaze. “Sit down with Anyanka.”

“Anya as in my best friend’s wife who hates my guts because I can’t sell her a shop I don’t technically own.”

“Wife? They tie the knot, then? Thought she was plannin’ a big showy production of the nuptials. Don’t tell me Harris convinced her to rush off to Vegas.”

Buffy’s frown deepened. “I thought they were married. Anya mentioned something the other night about being newlyweds and that’s the reason why they wouldn’t have wanted to be Dawn’s guardians, if Angel had given them the choice.”

“Engaged is all, last I heard,” Spike said. “Announced it at the Watcher’s graveside. Thought it’d perk everyone right up. Apparently, they’d been sittin’ on it since the night you…”

“Oh.”

Spike edged toward her, now looking bemused. “What’s the matter, Slayer?”

“I just…” She shook her head to clear it, then wished she hadn’t when it gave a defiant throb. “Them being married was another thing that was different here.”

“Yeah…”

He was confused, and she couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t his world being upended, after all. At least not more so than it already had been. But there was another gap potentially closed, making the things that separated her reality from the one she had landed inside even sparser than they had been before. If it was possible that a plane _not_ carrying Giles had gone down in her world, then it was just as possible that Xander and Anya _were_ engaged and just hadn’t gotten around to sharing the news.

Then but for a single action she hadn’t taken, this _would_ be her life.

Those were thoughts for another time.

“Anya won’t want to see me,” Buffy said, forcing herself forward. “She was here yesterday when I got here and… Well, there were words.”

“She was here? Thought you— _Buffy_ —took her key.”

“There were two, apparently. One to the front and one to the back. She…” Buffy’s eyes went wide and she turned to him sharply. “A box. She had a box. She was taking things from the back.”

Spike let out a low snarl. “And you let her?” he demanded, launching into motion. In a flash, he was stomping up the stairs, having managed to practically fly there without knocking anything over. “Bloody hell, Slayer…”

“Hey!” With not nearly the speed or grace, Buffy negotiated her way through the shelves they’d spent the last few hours combing through, managing to bump both knees and elbows into unforgiving surfaces in her hurry. Damn vampires. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Not let her make off with what’s yours.”

“She said it wasn’t—”

“Are you thick?” He was well and fuming now, his jaw in full clench-mode, his nostrils flared. “Might notta known what my Slayer was lookin’ for, but you knew she was lookin’ for somethin’. Or did that not matter at all to you?”

“Well, why the hell weren’t you here?” Buffy fired back, her face hot. “If finding the paw was so dire, then why has it been _just_ Buffy doing the looking? Or is getting Dawn back not as important to you as you—”

“Don’t you bloody dare,” Spike said, and she stopped short at the steel in his voice. The sort that screamed its reminder that he was a predator and defied her to forget it again. “She told me not to come so I didn’t.”

“Why in the world would she tell—”

But the answer coming to her just as fast. Of course, Spike couldn’t help. The more she was seen with him, the better the chance of their affair becoming public knowledge. And that was something this world’s Buffy couldn’t risk right now. If Buffy understood nothing else, she understood _that_. Regardless of the way things had gone differently here, more remained the same. Buffy was navigating life back from the dead, dogged by something worse than depression, even if she had someone she loved on her side. Just getting from one breath to the next took all her focus. Anything more was asking for a breakdown.

“You don’t do what you’re told, Spike,” Buffy said, softer. “At least not the Spike I know.”

“Not always. But when it matters? When it’s you?” He stared at her a moment longer before huffing and shaking his head. “Not sure what it takes to convince you, but I damn well pity the bloke who gets to try.”

With that, he whirled around and stomped into the shop proper, leaving her feeling a combination of hurt and guilt that she didn’t have the capacity to handle. Maybe he was right. Letting Anya leave yesterday with a box of things had seemed the easiest way to avoid a confrontation—and if she were being honest, she hadn’t given much thought to what the other Buffy was looking for. All she’d known was that the last time she’d seen the monkey’s paw, she’d been in the basement, not in the training room.

It wasn’t quite night when they stepped outside, but close enough that, with the aid of overhead cloud coverage, Spike didn’t need to worry about making a mad dash anywhere. He didn’t say a word to her as she locked up the shop, nor as he stalked the familiar path to Xander’s apartment. She thought about asking why they weren’t taking the sewers but thought the better of it. Spike rarely got so angry that he _didn’t_ run his mouth, and she didn’t really feel like being on the losing side of an argument at the moment. She also didn’t feel like apologizing—seemed that was all she’d done for the last twelve hours and she’d had her fill.

Like any of this had been her plan.

When they were outside Xander’s place, however, something did occur to her—something that couldn’t wait.

“What are we going to tell them?”

Spike snorted, and that was the only indication he gave that he’d heard her before he hammered his fist on the door.

“Seriously, Spike, won’t they be suspicious if you’re with me? Or are we such good friends that—”

The door opened and she cut herself off before her stupid mouth got her into more trouble. Because it wasn’t Anya who opened the door—it was Xander. From the look of things—the safety vest and the windblown state of his hair—he’d just gotten home. “Oh,” he said with mild surprise. “Buffy. Spike. Did we have plans?”

“Need to talk to the little lady,” Spike said, pushing his way inside without awaiting an invite. “Slayer’s got herself in a jam.”

If Xander was at all put out that the resident undead had just helped himself into his apartment, he didn’t let it show. Didn’t do much of anything aside from blink and turn his attention to Buffy, eyes now round with concern. “How can we help?”

“For starters,” Spike called, “that’s not our Buffy. Anyanka!”

Buffy opened her mouth to protest, but the damage had been done. Xander stepped back, the concern in his gaze shifting to suspicion. It was a testament to how different the group dynamic was here, how quickly he believed it. In her world, Xander would roll his eyes and smart off about Spike being evil or out of his head or both. In this world, he believed. Simple as that.

“I’m still Buffy, Xan,” she said hurriedly. “Just…like he said—err, shouted—not your Buffy. And not exactly the way I would have told you.”

Xander didn’t say anything, just eyeballed her up and down as though searching for scales or a tail or something. Then he sighed, rolled his shoulders back, and motioned for her to come inside. “I had plans, you know,” he said. “It’s Must-See-TV Thursday and Niles and Daphne _finally_ got together. Eight seasons of pining paying off in increments each week.”

Buffy offered a wan smile as she stepped over the threshold. “I’m sorry. TV night is an important night.”

“Not as important as finding out how you’re not our Buffy, granted, but up there. I’ll have Anya record it. We’ve never watched the _Seinfeld_ finale more than once, anyway.”

The sound of raised voices cut off whatever lame reply Buffy had been about to come up with. She contorted her face into what she hoped was a suitable forgive-me expression, then followed Xander to the living room where Anya and Spike looked a second away from needing a referee called in.

“—wasn’t yours and you bloody well know it, so fork it over.”

“I invested my blood and sweat in that shop!” Anya shot back, her skin bright red and her eyes daggered. “Literal, bad-smelling sweat. She can’t have everything that was in there! It was _mine_ too!”

“She’s not doin’ anythin’ with it, you miserable bint.”

“Exactly! It’s sitting there all unsold and—”

“Anya!” Xander bellowed, cupping his mouth for effect. “We have a problem.”

Spike winced and jerked away, muttering something about pulsers and their having no respect for his sensitive hearing. But the tactic had worked—the arguing came to an end. Though now he and Anya had turned their glares on Buffy, which she did not appreciate, even if she deserved it.

Apparently, she’d used up the last of her goodwill at the shop, where Spike was concerned. All of that warmth, residual or borrowed, had leaked away. And that hurt, too, even if it shouldn’t.

But this was his world—his life she’d messed up. For everything he’d done since she’d told him the truth, she had to try.

“Anya,” Buffy said, fighting for calm and doing her best to ignore the burn of Spike’s unwavering attention. “I need to know if a monkey’s paw was in the stuff you took home from the shop yesterday.”

“A monkey’s paw? Why on earth would I take a monkey’s paw?”

“Oh, I dunno,” Spike drawled, his voice shaking. All of him shaking, actually, like he was fighting to keep from flying into a rage. “Simple solution to all your woes, innit? Make a wish, get yourself a shop. That’s what you vengeance demon types do, right? Muck with magic?”

Anya gaped at him, then smacked his shoulder hard enough that the resulting _crack_ made Buffy wince.

“Anya!” Xander stumbled forward. “Really! With the hitting!”

But Anya didn’t answer him, too busy glaring stakes at Spike. “Do you take me for an idiot, you oversized mosquito?” she spat. “ _Eleven hundred years_ spent granting wishes and doling out vengeance, and you accuse _me_ of being stupid enough to use a monkey’s paw?” Now she did turn to Xander, her eyes flashing. “He’s insulting me, Xander. Make him leave.”

Xander opened his mouth, but Buffy nudged him before he could say anything. She could see, in slow motion, what was coming next. Could already feel her face burning with a combination of shame and humiliation, and her heart had taken to thumping at a breakneck speed. The way this Anya looked at her now was already hard to stomach, but that was Buffy’s problem, not Spike’s. And if there was a chance that Anya knew anything about the monkey’s paw, Buffy had to take it.

“It was me,” she blurted before she could lose her nerve. “I found the monkey’s paw and I used it. I made three wishes with it at the Magic Box. And I ended up here.”

The silence that met this proclamation was the screaming sort.

“You used a monkey’s paw,” Anya said in a flat tone. “Are you stupid?”

“Let’s just go with yes.”

“What the hell is a monkey’s paw?” Xander asked, whirling to Buffy. “I guess it has to do with you not being our Buffy.”

“It’s a powerful bit of dark magic, is what it is,” Anya said, unblinking. “It grants wishes at a horrible price.”

“Bloke called Jacobs wrote about it,” Spike offered. He’d moved to lean against the wall, his lighter in hand but nothing else. He flicked the cap back and forth, watching its progress with fixed intensity. Like looking up might cost him something. “Bloody cautionary tale they oughta have taught you Yanks in school.”

Buffy nodded, waited to see if Spike would look at her. He didn’t. “I found it at the Magic Box when I was working there with you and Giles,” she said, forcing her gaze back to Anya. “I was looking for a mummy hand.”

Anya snorted, crossing her arms. “And you mistook a paw for a hand? You _are_ stupid.”

“Giles?” Xander looked lost again. “But he—”

“She means in her world, Xander. The one she came from.”

“He’s still alive there?”

Again, Buffy nodded. “He…he was. He came back after I was resurrected. There wasn’t a plane crash. Or…not one that I remember, anyway.”

“That means the crash was most likely a wish consequence.” Anya stepped forward. That she’d landed on this conclusion without effort was only somewhat jarring. Anya _would_ understand all of this, in ways Buffy never could, which somehow made everything worse. “How long have you been here pretending to be our Buffy?” the former demon asked.

She swallowed, glanced to Xander, then to Spike, who was still studying his lighter, before meeting Anya’s gaze again. “Two days. I was at the Magic Box. Then I went home and…Angel was there. I tried going to Giles’s, but… I didn’t know. I found out that night at the Bronze.”

Xander edged away from her like she was a dangerous animal he was struggling not to spook, then turned to Anya. “What did you mean, the crash was a consequence?”

“If Giles is alive in her world, then she wished something that changed that here.”

He paled. Swallowed. “She’s the reason Giles is dead?”

“Most likely. That depends on the wishes,” Anya said without so much as a flinch. “What were they?”

Buffy drew her lower lip between her teeth, looking again to Spike. Why, she didn’t know. Just had become a habit at some point, looking to Spike. Trusting that he could, if nothing else, provide a reprieve from the noise and the pain that her life had been ever since she’d punched her way out of her coffin. But even though he was no longer studying his lighter, his eyes made it clear that Spike had no interest in providing her a soft landing. Not this one, anyway.

What a difference a day made. Just a single day. Though she knew she’d made the right choice, telling him the truth, that she’d been right in what it would cost her burned more than it should. The soft looks, the gentle touches, the quiet reassurance—all gone. She was an imposter walking around in some other girl’s skin and no matter that, confusing as it was, she also _was_ the other girl, Spike wasn’t about to give her an inch.

So, she exhaled slowly. “Can we sit down?”

Xander nodded and gestured at the kitchen table. “Pull up a chair. Might as well get comfy. Should we order a pizza?” His grin, which had been uneasy to begin with, died the second he met his fiancée’s gaze. “Or…not.”

Just as well. Buffy wasn’t hungry, and there was a lot to go over. More than she felt she had license to, given she intended to leave the consequences to another Buffy, but the story required context to be understood, and she wasn’t about to skimp out on it, no matter the fallout.

So, she sat and started to talk. There was no sense leaving anything out, either for her or this world’s Buffy, given that Spike knew everything. If he had any reservations about her spilling all of Buffy’s secrets, he didn’t show it. Instead, he sat and stared at her as she detailed the scene that had greeted her when she’d climbed out of her coffin. How she’d stumbled through a town turned into a demon warzone, convinced she was in Hell. It had been somewhat similar here, from what Spike had said, with a few notable differences. The fact that there had been a Buffybot, which Buffy hadn’t contextualized but to say that the guy who’d made the creepy sex doll had also made one in Buffy’s likeness that they’d molded into a weapon. She went through her second climb up the tower, how Dawn had found her as she’d been contemplating the pavement below, reliving the moment right before she’d jumped, chasing it down to wrestle it into submission, because things had been so clear then. She’d understood, she’d gotten it. Death was her gift because it would give her sister, the world itself, life.

She’d talked more about her feelings, that hollowness, in the day she’d been here than she’d let herself think about it in all the days leading up to it. Every moment back home seemed like a dodge, trying to remain a step ahead so it didn’t catch her. And as painful as it was, there was catharsis there, too. This wasn’t the Xander she’d have to face for the rest of her life, knowing he knew all this. And yes, there was that residual guilt, sharing other Buffy’s secrets, but other Buffy could just deal. With all of it.

Which was what she told herself as she heard the words tumble from her lips, as the suspicion and concern on Xander’s face melted into something worse—something like recognition, the more she described what being here was like. By the time she’d given a name to the place she’d been, said that it was Heaven, not Hell, and that living through every moment was a challenge a lot like dying itself, he had tears running down his cheeks.

And a small, vindictive part of her thought, _good_.

It was slow, but Xander eventually gave his head a shake before turning to Anya, all but begging her to lie to him with his eyes. “Does this mean our Buffy was in Heaven, too?”

Anya, who seemed somewhat mollified but not nearly as moved, offered a one-shouldered shrug. “There’s no way to know.”

But there was. Buffy saw it the second before Xander did, in the form of Spike’s nonexistent poker face.

“You knew?” he barked, sounding _now_ more like the Xander she knew. All indignation and suspicion, aimed at the vampire he hated. “Why? Why would she tell you and not us?”

“She didn’t,” Buffy blurted before she could stop herself—before, even, she could analyze just what the hell it was she meant by it. A flicker of loyalty to Spike, she supposed. A desire to make things right with him if no one else. “I…I did. When I got here, I told him. Spike and I are… In my world, he’s my boyfriend.”

Well, that did it. Xander blinked, dumbfounded. “Your boyfriend?” When she nodded—doing her damnedest not to look at Spike, though feeling his stare as though it were a physical thing—her friend blew out a breath, laughed a little, and shook his head. “I… Well, I didn’t see that coming.”

“Believe me, neither did I,” Buffy replied.

“Does he… Are you happy over there? With him?”

Buffy faltered a bit, searching for words. “Umm, aside from the whole post-Heaven-stress trauma… He makes it easier to be here. And I love him.”

It was impossible to miss Spike’s flinch, even out of her periphery, and he rose to his feet and stalked off for a moment. Thankfully, neither Xander nor Anya seemed to notice—they were too busy staring at her.

Then Xander looked down and blew her socks off.

“Well…damn, Buff,” he said. “What the hell did you have to use the monkey’s paw for? You have Giles, Dawn… I mean, I’m still processing the hell out of the Heaven thing—and yes, I did hear how that sounded—and you’re with someone you actually love?” He waited until she nodded, forced as it was. “And he loves _you_? What could you possibly need that you weren’t getting?”

The old reliables came to mind. Money and security, knowing that Dawn would be cared for, would stay with her. She waited for Xander to ask how Angel fit into this, because she _hadn’t_ been thinking that far ahead—or at all—when she’d blurted that she and Spike were a thing. But amid that was resentment too, because who the hell did he think he was, asking her that after what he’d done to her? After what he and Anya and Willow and Tara—all of them had done? Having Dawn and Giles and _love_ didn’t magically make life better. How would they know, if they weren’t living with the crushing weight of fear that it would all come apart? The loneliness, the despair, the wondering what she might have done different to stay where she was, if she’d not only been torn out but ejected from Heaven because of some fault of her own. How Heaven—celestial, holy Heaven—hadn’t been strong enough to shut the door on Willow.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” she managed weakly. “Worrying…about Dawn. About what’ll happen to her if her grades don’t improve. That she’ll be taken from me. I just…wanted to know she was safe.”

“So, you wished for her to go to your dad?”

“No. I didn’t. I absolutely did not. I don’t remember how I worded it, but it had nothing to do with my dad. I thought she’d be safe. Stay with me.”

“You’re an idiot,” Anya muttered.

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“You picked up an object that you were told was only there to be destroyed, and you used it. And you’re here trying to make Xander feel sorry for you when you’re the reason Dawn was taken away.” She crossed her arms and shot her a defiant look. “What was the next wish? Is it the one that got Giles killed?”

“Anya!” Xander barked.

Buffy flinched but refused to blink. “Yes,” she said. “I wished…I wished for financial security. That I wouldn’t have to worry about the mortgage or the bills or…or anything. And I came here and Giles is dead and apparently, he left me everything.”

Xander was staring at her once more, this time pale and slack-jawed. Like he’d expected, on some level, for her to contradict it, even when all evidence had been to the contrary. That was Xander through and through, though. Unable to believe the worst in her until he had no choice in the matter. It was so familiar that the blow of losing Giles hit her all over again, only harder and worse than before. Like it had taken this moment to make it real.

“My livelihood,” Anya said, jolting Buffy’s attention back to her. The former demon was staring at the table—staring, then suddenly slammed her hands upon it with a burst of motion and jumped to her feet. “You took _everything_ from me.”

“That was never the intention,” Buffy said, striving for calm. “I didn’t know—”

“You didn’t know. That’s the crux of it. Buffy finds a cursed object that your Giles bought to destroy, and that isn’t clue enough for you to leave well enough alone?”

“I was stuck in a—”

“You were weak!” Anya snapped, slapping the table again. “You had what was clearly a defective mummy hand—”

“Defective? I tried talking to you about it!”

“Did you really? Or were you so focused on the time-loop that you skimped over that part? Defective merchandise is not something I just blow off, and if the mummy hand was active and trying to murder you, then it had been bewitched by someone and therefore useless to me.”

Buffy opened her mouth to protest—scream, actually—that of course she had gone to Anya about the homicidal appendage…but the words wouldn’t come. She knew she’d mentioned the mummy hand to Giles—Giles was her go-to in those situations, and it was _his_ shop, after all—but the more pressing issue had been that she was reliving the same twenty minutes over and over.

No, she had to have mentioned it. The time-loop had seemed tied to the mummy hand, and by extension, the customer. But if Anya was right, and the mummy hand _had_ been tampered with, then maybe there had been more at work. The same _more_ that had been following her around—just enough _other_ to not really stand out in Sunnydale, but more persistent and targeted.

There was the doohickey that had caused the time-warp on campus, which had preceded the nightmare of chauvinistic bullcrap at the construction site. Add it all together and it was like something had been deliberately testing her, putting her through her paces. And if it could make time act all wonky, who was to say it couldn’t exercise its influence on people, too?

Maybe it had wanted her to use the monkey paw, whatever _it_ was. Though how it could know what she’d wish for was beyond her. Or maybe it didn’t matter. From the stories Anya had told, what her targets had wished for had been incidental—it was the mayhem those wishes created that she had relished, particularly when someone got what they deserved.

Was this what she deserved?

Buffy steeled herself and looked to Anya again, forcing everything back. “Is this world even real?”

She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the former demon’s eyes went even darker than before. “What?”

“Is this real? Did any of this exist before my wish or did I make it?” She could feel Spike’s glare on her before she felt him reenter the room. It took a lot of restraint, but she refrained from turning her head in his direction. “You talked about worlds before. Other worlds. Worlds you created when you were all vengeancy. Ones with…shrimp and without?”

Anya was still for a moment, still seething, clearly not sure where Buffy was going with this but at least she’d stopped yelling for a moment. “That happened, yes. Other worlds were created. Particularly when someone would wish that so-and-so was never born, or something along those lines.”

“You _created_ those worlds. They didn’t exist before the wishes.”

“Yes and no.” Now she was grinning, and it wasn’t a nice grin. Rather frightening, actually, considering the expression she’d worn just a second ago. “You want to know if you’re on the hook for this world. The answer is yes. It exists because you wished it.”

“So, you and everyone else…didn’t exist three days ago?” Now Buffy did look at Spike. Couldn’t help it. That would mean that the sordid history he had with this world’s Buffy hadn’t actually happened. Last night, he’d said it didn’t matter whether it was real or not—that being real to him was enough—but Buffy was very much aware of how reality could put theory to shame. If this world’s Buffy had actually never existed, then maybe—

“I wasn’t finished,” Anya said shortly. “This reality couldn’t be without you, that is true. But it has also _always_ been.”

Well, that made the kind of sense that didn’t.

“Umm, Ahn?” Xander said, raising his hand and looking more than a little lost. “That… What?”

“Humans think of time as a straight line with fixed points,” Anya went on. “But time isn’t a straight line. It’s a squiggly line that has a bunch of loops and branches and other branches and more loops on top of those branches…forever and ever, indefinitely. Where we land on that line depends on the choices we make, and, because of demons like me and artifacts like the monkey’s paw, the choices others make that shape our reality. Because Buffy wished this world into being, it was. But it always was, because she was always going to wish it.”

Buffy was relieved to see Xander appeared no more enlightened than she felt, and she wasn’t sure where Anya’s explanation left her, exactly. If the world always was, even before she’d known she was going to wish it into existence—that meant everything that had happened here had happened before she’d even seen the monkey’s paw. But somehow, inexplicably, also because of it.

Her head started to pound once more.

“So no, Buffy,” Anya said. “This is a world you created. With very real people in it—people who suffer the repercussions of your decisions. What you see is what you got because of what you wanted.” She paused. “I suppose this means I have been too hard on our Buffy. All along, this was _your_ fault, not hers. And now I’ll never get to tell her sorry.”

“Never?” Spike didn’t speak the word so much as bark it, his calm disappearing in a blink. “The hell you mean, never? Why the bugger do you think we’re here? We’ll find the sodding paw and destroy it. Take it all back.”

Xander raised his hand. “Would that…take the world back, though? Like, undo the wish that made this world to begin with? ’Cause if that’s the case, I’m gonna vote no.”

Anya rolled her eyes. “No, Xander. It wouldn’t undo this world. The last wish I worked was undone and the world that came from it still turned. It was where I lost my amulet.” She made a seizing motion at her neck, from which hung nothing. “I attempted to go back, remember?”

“I doubt I’ll ever be able to forget what Willow looked like as a vampire, no.”

“So that’s what we do,” Spike said, looking between Anya and Xander as though expecting them to rush for the door at any second. “Don’t have the sodding paw here, fine. Gotta be somewhere, doesn’t it? We find it, destroy it, send this Slayer back to her world and bring our girl home.”

The edge to his voice, combined with the urgency in his eyes, was a bit of a giveaway, in Buffy’s opinion. A non-smitten Spike wouldn’t give a crap which Buffy occupied which universe, and she waited for either Xander or Anya to say something. Neither did.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Xander before throwing her a smile. It was strained, that smile, but not unkind. “We’ll get you back, Buff. The Scooby Gang is—”

“No, we won’t,” Anya said flatly. “The paw can’t be destroyed.”

A sick, sour taste flooded Buffy’s mouth, her chest lurching so hard the room seemed to go lopsided. “What do you mean? Giles bought it to destroy it. That was the whole reason he had it.”

“The monkey’s paw is a very powerful magical object. You say it was in a case back in your world?” When Buffy nodded, Anya inclined her head. “Then he hadn’t found a way to do it. If you buy something to get it out of circulation, you don’t just keep it lying around. You destroy it the second you have it. Most likely he had already tried and discovered it couldn’t be done.”

“But he _meant_ to destroy it. You told me so.”

“I can’t vouch for what some other version of Anya said in your former world. Maybe she’s dumber than I am.”

“Rubbish,” Spike said, even rougher now. His eyes were practically on fire, a reflecting yellow under the blue like he was struggling to keep hold of his demon. Like he was on the edge of losing control completely. “We’ll burn the bloody thing—”

“That won’t work.”

“How the sodding hell do you know?”

At that, Anya swelled up. “Because granting wishes was my thing, you idiot. Anything out there that could do what I did, I made it my business to know. It was competition, after all, and we had quotas to meet. D’Hoffryn wasn’t one to accept excuses. ‘Oh, I couldn’t close the deal on the miller’s daughter. She found a monkey’s paw instead.’ That’s how you got yourself put on probation. Monkeys’ paws can’t be destroyed by anything other than the Promethean Flame, and that went out more than ten millennia ago.”

“The what?” Buffy asked, her head now filling with a dull buzzing, her skin growing hot and her heart starting to thunder so hard her ribs shook.

No destroying it. There was no destroying the monkey’s paw. No going home. No seeing Giles again. No Dawn waiting to give her the full snotty teenager treatment. No normal world with its normal Spike and normal Angel living his normal vampire life in normal LA. The image she’d had, the hope, vanished like so much vapor.

From a distance, she heard Anya answering her question in that same matter-of-fact tone from before. The Promethean Flame—rumored to be the fire brought to humankind from the god Prometheus, the source of all fire as it existed on earth. It had been used for many rituals, as the root of a thousand spells, and, according to legend, could burn through anything. Except it had vanished one night from the temple in which it was tended—a night preceding Anya’s birth, so far back that its very existence was up for debate. As far as she knew, as far as she had been told, there was no other power out there that stood a chance of destroying a monkey’s paw. The magics that imbued it with its awful power were too strong. History was littered with tales of people who had gotten exactly what they’d wished for, desperate to take it back, and all ended the same. Dead by their own hands when it proved impossible, the true victim to whatever the paw had given. Their blood fueled its power, and so on and so on. Chances were good even now that the Promethean Flame would prove ineffective, as much as the paw had consumed over the eons.

“I’ll wish again,” Buffy muttered, seizing on the rogue thought and holding it down. “I’ll wish to go back. When we find it, I’ll wish again.”

“So your plan is to create more worlds to ruin?” Anya shot back. “That isn’t how the monkey’s paw works. You wouldn’t go back to your world—you’d be thrown into another one.”

“But…” She turned her stinging eyes to Spike, who had gone very still, his mouth open and his face even whiter than usual. He looked like a ghost.

“Face it, you’re stuck here,” Anya said, and this time there was cruel relish in her voice. “You lost your sister. I lost my shop. Giles is dead. But hey, you got the green and we know that, wherever she is, Dawn is doing A-okay. Take a good look around. Your wishes came true. May you get with them exactly what you deserve.”

Her ears started to ring, shrill and deafening. Buffy stared at Anya, who stared back, her expression shuttered, her eyes cold. Then she looked to Xander, who was gazing at her, dumbstruck.

Then something horrible burst through the silence. Something raw and wounded, the howl of an animal not-yet-dead but watching as the vultures drew nearer. It was Spike, screaming. Screaming and screaming and screaming and the sound wouldn’t stop. It ripped at her ears, at the air itself, pushing against it as though to break free and become a tangible thing. Then he was in motion, a blur of leather hell-bent on destruction, yanking the phone right out of the wall, the cord ripping and bits of plaster scattering across the floor. And Anya was screaming too, yelling at him, shouting his name, and Xander was on his feet, and Spike shoved them both back hard enough it hurt. She saw—saw his yellow eyes slam shut and his hands go to his head in that way she knew so well. The chip firing, but Spike didn’t stop, just kept roaring as he sent the table careening wildly onto its side. He screamed and screamed and didn’t stop.

And then Buffy had to get out. Had to breathe. She was moving the next instant—not just moving but running. To the door, down the hall, harder and faster until cool night air kissed her cheeks and flooded her lungs, and everything was falling apart. Her skull pounding, her skin burning, her chest cracked. Night had fallen and there were stars overhead—the same stars from her world, but not hers. Stars that belonged to a different universe, a different Buffy—a Buffy that would never see them again.

_Stuck. Stuck._

It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.

But she felt, down to her bones, that it was. Why else would Spike scream like that? Spike, who never gave up, no matter what?

Because he felt it too and understood what she did.

There was no going back.


	12. Yeah, I want a different answer, so I ask you once again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and the next chapter are two of the more difficult chapters I’ve ever written, so I must give a huge shout out to my betas, bewildered, Niamh, and Kimmie Winchester for holding my hand and reassuring me that no irredeemable lines were crossed.
> 
> More notes at the end. Also, please take care to notice the addition of a new warning.

In the end, it wasn’t as hard as she’d thought it’d be—coming clean.

Okay, that was a lie. But things could have definitely gone worse.

Buffy splashed another handful of water on her face, knowing she was stalling for time but also needing the moment away from the others. The sound of muffled conversation that reached her was enough to exhaust her on principle. It had been a long night—the longest she could recall, ever—filled with explanations and apologies and more confused, worried looks than she could handle. And it wasn’t over yet.

Xander had found her outside his apartment, stopped her before she could do what felt natural and take off. Told her that if she was anything like his Buffy, she would know that learning something was _impossible_ was nothing if not another wholly surmountable challenge for the Scooby Gang. The fact that she was standing there at all was a testament to that, wasn’t it? Buffy should be dead and buried and just look at her. She was alive—still buried, in most ways, but alive nonetheless. In order to get her back to her world, to get _their_ Buffy back where she belonged, they needed the whole gang.

The whole gang was fractured at the moment, though. Spike had bolted without a word—she hadn’t even seen him leave. Anya was also too volatile at the moment, so Tara had volunteered to take her out to blow off some steam, and maybe it was better that way, anyway. The journey had started with just the three of them—Buffy, Xander, and Willow.

Buffy had nodded numbly, trying to mask how hurt she was that Spike had left her like he had. When she’d said as much, Xander had favored her with a wry, half-smile and replied, “He just got the worst news a guy can get, Buff. Give him some time and he’ll come around.”

Two or three beats had passed before the words had landed their punch. Then she’d looked up, wide-eyed. “ _Spike_ got the worst news?”

“Yeah. Your whole cover story about having been in love with him might have passed the smell test, _maybe_ , if it weren’t for the fact that where you’re from, you’re _not_ married to Mr. Tall, Dull and Boring.” Amazingly, Xander’s eyes had twinkled. “That plus Spike’s epic freak-out made a lot of things super clear that probably ought to have been for a while now. Like the fact that Buffy—our Buffy—is doing the horizontal mambo with the Evil Dead on the side.”

She hadn’t known how to respond so she hadn’t tried. It had been a long shot, anyway, passing herself off as the lovesick-for-Spike type with her confused state of mind. And even though it wasn’t her indiscretion, part of her felt like she needed to justify it all the same. “He—Spike, he told me what happened here with Angel and… Angel’s a vampire where I come from. Still. He never came back after leaving Sunnydale.”

“Sounds like a big ole check in the plus column, from where I’m standing,” Xander had retorted. Then he’d winced as though having caught himself saying something tactless. “I guess, though, you never got over him, huh? If you wished for him to be…well, your husband?”

“That’s not what I wished,” Buffy had replied, probably with more defensiveness in her tone than was advisable. “I don’t even know what I wished. Just… What I told you about Heaven, that was true. And yeah, Spike and I aren’t having a torrid affair where I come from, but he has been the only one I can stand to be around for any period of time without feeling like I have to be okay or else I’ve let someone down. I saw Angel and it did nothing for me, so I thought, maybe if he’d never left or we’d found a way to stay together, things might be…better.”

That soft, understanding look—one that seemed so foreign on Xander—had only deepened. “Sorry,” he’d said. “But…also, did you just hear yourself?”

“What?”

“Spike’s the only person you can stand to be around. Gonna guess that’s why he’s the one you talked to here, huh?” He’d waited for her nod before offering one of his own. “Does he love you, where you’re from?”

“He says he does.” She’d paused, fidgeted. “Yeah, he does. And I know he does. He has for a while.”

“Then… I dunno, Buff, maybe seeing what _happily ever after_ looks like with Angel was exactly what you needed.” When she’d opened her mouth to protest, he’d brought up his hands. “Sorry. I’m just… I’ve been worried about our Buffy for so long… It’s nice knowing that she hasn’t been as miserable as we all thought she was.”

Personally, Buffy thought that was a matter of how one defined _misery._ That this Buffy had love and support, was in some version of an ideal relationship, would have meant the world if it wasn’t something she had to hide. That the best she could do was sneak around with the man she loved because she felt beholden to her vow—even if she understood why—was misery dressed up in different colors.

But, she supposed, that this world’s Buffy really did love Spike meant that she was, on some level, happy. At least happier than _she_ was, and far less alone.

So Xander had walked Buffy back into his apartment and called Willow. Arrangements had been made, pizza had been ordered, and once Willow had arrived, Buffy had told the story about who she was and how she’d gotten here, hopefully for the last time.

The response had been more of the same. Blank stares, lots of blinking, horror at the idea that Buffy had been in Heaven, and open-mouthed shock as she’d described the wishes. Then something else, something worse, when it had been made clear that she was the reason Giles was dead.

For Buffy, that particular pain was one that seemed a moving target. It had gone from being all-consuming to almost numb, for as often as her mind dragged her there. Perhaps it was the belief, the hope, the same that felt impossible now, that she would get back to a place where it wasn’t true. Where none of this reality was.

It might be a pipe dream, but she couldn’t give it up. Xander was right. They had conquered the impossible before. It was kind of their thing.

At the present, though, Buffy felt more physically drained than she’d ever been. It seemed almost impossible that she’d awakened in Spike’s bed that afternoon. That just a few hours ago, they’d been going through the stuff at the Magic Box, the thought that she might be on the cusp of going home pushing her forward even as her certainty that they’d find what they were looking for had begun to slip away.

That had been a different world. The one she was in now…

Buffy sighed and splashed some more water on her face. She had to go back out there, see if Willow had thought of anything brilliant since she’d excused herself—a way to open the door between this world and the one she’d left behind. So, with a steeling breath, she dried her face on a spare washcloth, switched off the light, and eased back into the hall.

The voices coming from the kitchen became clearer, the words separating from vaguely English noise the closer she drew. What caused her to stop and listen before she rounded the corner and made her presence known wasn’t anything striking—just a sense.

“—seems like Buffy to me,” Xander was saying. “Albeit a sad Buffy. But if our Buffy really was in Heaven—”

“That was a different world,” Willow whisper-shouted back. “We’re taking a lot on faith here.”

“Not that different, according to her.”

“Again with the faith taking.”

“Why shouldn’t we? I mean, it’s not like things like this haven’t happened before. Have we forgotten Mistress Willow, she of the bondage and leather fixation?”

There was a pause—a long one. Then a sigh. Also a long one. “Giles, Xander. She killed _Giles_.”

“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

“Is it, though? I know we’ve all screwed up magically. A lot if you’re, well, me. But none of the things I’ve done have ever gotten someone killed.” Another pause. “Okay, maybe there were some close calls, but usually because of demonus interruptus, not because of the spell itself.”

A creak, like Xander had shifted his weight in the chair he’d claimed. “Yeah. I know. It’s hard to swallow.”

“More than that. Our Buffy is out there somewhere. We don’t even know where.” Beat. “Do we?”

“Anya was fuzzy on that. I asked her before she left. Could be she’s in this Buffy’s world, which…”

“Giles and Dawn.”

“If she can get out of the loop thingy that this Buffy told us about.”

“She can. It’s Buffy.”

“ _That’s_ Buffy, too,” Xander said.

“But…not really. Not our Buffy.” Another long stretch of silence, this one almost crushingly heavy. “Don’t give me that look,” Willow replied. “I know you, Alexander Lavelle Harris, so don’t even pretend like I’m saying something you’re not thinking. She’s not our Buffy. We need _our_ Buffy.”

“I’m not _not_ saying anything,” Xander said in a low rush. “But… Will, if she is in this Buffy’s world, though, would she even want to come back?”

“What? How can you even ask me that?”

“Giles. And Dawn. Plus, she’s not married to lard-ass over there. And if she is in love with Spike—”

“Yeah, how weird is that?”

“Focus, Will.”

“Just saying, best friend here. You’d think she’d let us know.”

“Right,” Xander replied dryly. “’Cause after everything she went through, after making you the maid of honor at her wedding, after the whole drama-fest that was her and Angel, for her to become Mrs. Former Fang-Face and then start getting some on the side? It would be of the huge. And it’d mean admitting that things didn’t work out the way she thought they would and facing a fair amount of the ‘I told you so’s’ chorus.”

“I would never say ‘I told you so’!”

“No, but I definitely would. And let’s face it, you’re a lousy liar.”

“I’ve…gotten better.” A sigh. “Fine. But you think she’d do that—our Buffy? Just…step into some life that’s not hers because everything’s rainbows and lollipops?”

Buffy chewed on the inside of her cheek to stave off the urge to laugh—or scream. Or some combination thereof. Maybe she would start laughing and never stop, just laugh herself all the way to the funny farm. The world she’d been so desperate to escape, the one that had been slowly suffocating her without being considerate enough to finish her off, was another Buffy’s idea of paradise. That there was some grade-A comedy.

She hadn’t allowed herself to think that far ahead—what had become of this world’s Buffy. Up until now, Buffy had her in some sort of mental stasis. Not here but not there, either. Just somewhere in the in-between, perhaps similar to the place where Angel’s soul disappeared to when it wasn’t confined within his body, only not there because this world’s Buffy wasn’t dead. She was just somewhere else. A _somewhere else_ that could be nowhere at all or her own world, like Anya had theorized.

Though Buffy couldn’t say she much liked the thought of the other Buffy living it up in a Sunnydale where her watcher was alive, her sister wasn’t in the wind, and her marital status was less complicated. Because Xander had a point there. Would that Buffy even want to come back to this world if she’d ended up in one where her most pressing problems were suddenly _not_ problems anymore? Would she even know it wasn’t her world? Would she think to ask?

Maybe she would be caught in the mummy hand loop forever. Or, perhaps a more clearheaded Buffy would see the way to break the loop. After all, once she saw her watcher was alive and the shop was operating normally, a little problem like a temporal vortex would be downright simple.

Then what? Would that Buffy go to Spike? Wait, stupid question. Of course she would. She’d see Dawn was okay, find no evidence that Angel had ever lived at Revello Drive, then hurry to a crypt that was much more Spartan than the one she had here but still home to the vampire she loved. A vampire whose eyes would light up the second he saw her, and though he might not understand why she threw herself into his arms, he definitely wouldn’t complain. Hell, he’d probably have her on her back before she could choke out more than a strangled _hello_. No telling if this world’s Buffy would object to that, have the same iron-clad view on what constituted adultery as her Spike. But then, who was to say that Buffy would even understand that the Spike over there wasn’t hers? Maybe she’d think Willow had done another spell or something. No reason to think her brain would immediately go to _not my reality_.

The idea of some other Buffy touching _her_ Spike, the one who had tended to her cut hands and told her that he’d saved her every night since she’d jumped, had Buffy’s stomach twisting. That would be the Buffy he wanted. The one a little less broken, a little more certain, and a whole lot more in love with him than the one who swung by to share her silences.

The least popular Buffy in two different dimensions. There should be an award for that sort of achievement.

Buffy skimmed her hands down her sides, then cleared her throat loudly to announce herself. Almost immediately, the conversation at the dinner table died, both Willow and Xander greeting her with the fakest of fake smiles.

“Hey,” Willow said brightly. “Thought you might’ve gotten lost.”

“In Xander’s apartment?”

“Well, who knows if it’s the same apartment as it is over where you’re from, right?” She barked a harsh laugh, then winced. “Sorry. I’m being weird.”

“Only by a lot,” Xander said.

“It’s okay,” Buffy said. Not because it was okay—nothing was okay—but it seemed better to pretend. Just like they were pretending they hadn’t been talking about her a moment ago. “I… Ahh, any ideas?”

Willow and Xander exchanged a glance. “Umm, it’ll take a while,” Willow replied. “I’ve never done a dimension search like this. We don’t know how many there are, for starters, or how they’re positioned. I mean, I’d _think_ the ones closest to our reality would be, well, _closest_ , as in physically, but that’s a whole level of thinking I’ve only ever done in theory.”

Xander arched an eyebrow. “Thinking in theory? Is that a thing?”

“Well, you know. Stargazing with your honey, you start talking. A-about how bad you feel for the worlds where a Willow doesn’t have her Tara or has never met her or something. Then freaking yourself out feeling so sorry for that Willow that Tara has to give you extra snuggles to remind you that you’re not that Willow.” Her cheeks went a little pink and she glanced down. “Or something way less specific.”

Buffy offered what she hoped was an understanding smile, though it felt strained and—if Willow’s deepening blush were any indication—didn’t look much better. “So we don’t know,” she said.

“I know it’s possible,” Willow replied. “I mean, the oft-referenced incident with vampire-me and… Wait. Do you even know what we’re talking about? I shouldn’t just assume. There was this whole thing where Anya—”

“Vampire you, major with the skankwear,” Buffy confirmed. “We mojoed her back to her world before she could turn the Bronze into yet another headline featuring the words ‘numerous teens slain’ and ‘massive neck trauma.’”

Willow blinked. “Okay…so your world is _really_ similar to this one.”

Buffy nodded, pursing her lips. “All the differences seem to be the result of something that didn’t happen when I visited Angel in LA after the Thanksgiving Day wannabe massacre at Giles’s.”

“Angel turning human,” the redhead mused. “If that’s the case, there’s only one point of difference of note. Granted, it’s a really pointy point of difference, but it’s like the ripple effect. You know—the idea that one little pond ripple grows and grows and grows and—” She cut herself off, catching Xander’s somewhat dull stare. “Anyway, the point is, because we sent vampire-me back to her world, I know it can be done. It’s just the finding of the other world that’s going to be tricky.”

“Why?”

“It’s kinda the opposite of what we did then,” Willow said. “We were in the main timeline trying to find the offshoot. Only now we’re in the offshoot trying to find the main one. Or, your main one. I mean, the theory’s the same but it could get complicated. Plus, _that_ timeline was a major variation of this one. The one we’re looking for isn’t.”

Buffy thought about Angel chowing down on chips, ignoring her when she’d crashed on the couch and telling her that he wished he were a vampire again. Maybe Willow’s definition of _major variation_ was different from hers. “I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I know it can seem like that, but…look at everything that didn’t change,” Willow said. “For instance, all things Adam? Glory? Dawn being the Key? The whole death and resurrection? Sunnydale looks pretty much the same here as it does in your world. The Sunnydale the other-me was from was… Well, from the few glimpses I got of it, very not. Whatever wish created that timeline was significant enough to really screw with the way things went. Your wishes weren’t.” At that, Willow looked down, and her eyes started to fill. “I mean…yet. That Giles is gone… That could lead to a huge variation. But it hasn’t. Not yet. Makes the world harder to find, among the bajillion worlds that could be out there. And even if there is a huge variation in what happens in this timeline from yours, there’s no way to know…since we’re here and not there.”

Buffy nodded again, though she didn’t understand any of it, except that Willow seemed to have taken the scenic route on explaining just how very screwed she was.

“But Buffy?” Willow added. “We’ll send you back.”

Though not without that dose of sunny optimism.

“I mean, I know you’re Buffy and everything, but you’re not our Buffy and our Buffy—”

But Buffy stopped listening. She didn’t really want to hear more about this world’s Buffy—the Buffy who had her act together, more or less, and might well have been handed the golden ticket to her very own utopia because some other Buffy had been desperate enough to make a bad trade. And just like in her world, the Scoobies were doing their best to see the bright side of everything, feeding her platitudes they couldn’t promise weren’t empty, dancing around obvious and uncomfortable truths. She didn’t want to be with people who told her what she wanted to hear. Who rode their optimism into the ground, or otherwise expected Buffy to come up with some miraculous save because that was what she did.

Apparently, even world-hopping wasn’t enough to spare her the weight of expectation. And, like before, she felt there was only one person she could be around.

Spike wouldn’t give her platitudes. He’d be straight with her—perhaps painfully so, but even pain was better than this.

“I gotta go,” Buffy said, cutting Willow off mid-speculation and making her way toward the door. “I… I just gotta go. Patrol. Or something.” Even she heard the lie in her voice, but thankfully neither Xander nor Willow called her on it. They did nothing, actually—no objections, no questions, no nothing. She’d decide later whether or not to be upset at the fact.

“Let us know how our vamps measure up over here,” Xander said.

Buffy forced a tight smile and looked over her shoulder. “Yeah. Okay,” she said, then paused when she reached the door, something else occurring to her. Something that she had to address before she left, just in case Spike asked her—it was the least she could do. “Umm…about me not being your Buffy or… _any_ of what’s going on with Spike. Please don’t tell Angel. That’s not my—”

“Buff,” Xander said, “don’t worry.”

“We don’t see Angel all that often,” Willow added.

“And we like it that way.”

“And you’re right. It is Buffy’s— _our_ Buffy’s—place to tell him.”

She released a deep breath, feeling a little better, though just a little. There was more there that she didn’t want to get in to—Angel’s feelings about his own humanity, the brunt of his anger at learning she’d wished for him to be miserable, even if that hadn’t been the intent. After everything she’d been through with the people who still liked her here, the thought of dealing with Angel was exhausting in itself. Never mind the can of worms that was the fact that he was being cuckolded by his own however-they-were-related vampire relation.

“Anya and Tara?” she asked.

“Never see him,” Xander said. “And Anya—I’ll talk to Anya.”

Buffy wasn’t sure what good that would do, but she also couldn’t ask for much else. Whatever happened would happen. All she could do was deal.

“Thanks,” she said, then slipped out of the apartment without another word.

* * * * *

She hadn’t intended to actually patrol, but the second she was outside, breathing in the night air, she realized that she hadn’t taken a tour of the graveyards since she’d been in this world, which seemed careless. Even if things hadn’t gone the way she’d intended, the people who lived in this version of Sunnydale no more deserved death by extreme and sudden blood loss than did those on the other side of the veil. Wherever the veil was. So Buffy directed her feet toward Sunnydale Cemetery, snapped the sturdiest-looking twig she could find off a low-hanging branch, and made the normal rounds. Perhaps a more together slayer would have headed home for a proper stake, but home meant the possibility of running into Angel, and she didn’t think she could face him again just yet. She was certain she didn’t want to.

Sunnydale Cemetery was low on action, though she managed to make a couple of dust clouds before moving onto the next stop on her normal rounds. She told herself she wouldn’t approach a certain rosewood tree when she reached Shady Hill, but she knew the second the thought crossed her mind that she was full of it. Not that Buffy was enough of a tree person to identify a rosewood out of a lineup; still, she somehow knew exactly which tree Spike had been referring to. One by a rather garish headstone that had always struck her as funny, since the only engraving on the thing was the surname, _Lazarus._ No epitaph to speak of. Too bad Willow hadn’t decided to raise him from the dead instead.

And beside Lazarus was the tree, and somehow Buffy’s eyes immediately knew where to go to find the notch Spike had mentioned. Perhaps it was more muscle memory, this body understanding things her mind did not.

There was a note tucked in there against the bark, near enough to the ground and hidden enough by the Lazarus headstone that it wouldn’t be in anyone’s natural line of sight. Still, she could see why Spike and this world’s Buffy had stuck to nicknames for each other, for the notes couldn’t be entirely hidden. If someone were to come around to tend to the graves or leave flowers and happened to be standing at just the right angle, they’d see something there that clearly didn’t belong. And being that this world’s Buffy wasn’t going to swing by anytime soon to collect her correspondence, leaving it there seemed careless.

At least that was what Buffy told herself as she snatched the note up. And once it was in her hand, reading it seemed a foregone conclusion.

> _Beatrice—_
> 
> _You like driving me crazy, don’t you? Don’t know what’s wrong but you know I’m not the guy you run from. Come ’round soon or I’ll have to make a house call._
> 
> _Benedick_

She sighed, tracing her eyes over the letters—a marriage of sloppy cursive and what she could tell had once been rather elegant penmanship. Such a small thing, small but intensely personal—his handwriting, something she’d never seen, which seemed strange considering all they had shared.

She was also taken by how vividly she heard him in his words, as though he were standing behind her, whispering into her ear. The low rumble of his voice, even the lilt of his accent, confined within a medium that forced restraint. Couldn’t say too much or he’d be easy to identify. Couldn’t say too little or Buffy might miss the urgency, the desperation. All of that combined with just enough of a threat that she could easily picture herself—or the other Buffy—immediately rushing over to Restfield to both berate him for even hinting that he might do such a thing and reassure him that all was well. Or at least tell him what _was_ wrong so he could help her shoulder the weight.

That was what this Spike did, after all. Shoulder the weight.

Buffy stuffed the note in her pocket, deciding she’d stalled enough. Even if Spike didn’t want to see her, he _did_ want to see her. He always did.

“Was wonderin’ when you’d show,” Spike said by way of greeting when she let herself into his crypt fifteen minutes later. “Thought you mighta forgotten your way.”

He was sprawled across the couch they’d sat on the night before, a drink in one hand, the other behind his head. He’d shed the duster, of course, and the button-up shirt he’d had on earlier was now completely open, giving her a tantalizing view of pale abs and a smooth, hard chest. The top button of his jeans was undone as well. Yet even though everything about him seemed to invite her ogling, Buffy somehow found herself staring at his bare feet. There were so many parts of Spike she had never considered before, and his feet were one of them. He’d kicked her with those feet, molded them into weapons just assuredly as she did hers. But without his boots, they were just feet. Toes and everything.

Spike and all his parts. His handwriting. His feet. Parts she never should have been made aware of, yet here she was.

“How are you?” she asked hoarsely.

He arched an eyebrow, took a long look at his drink as though it held the answer. “Me? I’m swell, thanks for askin’.”

“Okay, so it was a stupid question.” She crossed her arms, rocked a bit on her heels. If he were going explode on her, she wished he’d just get on with it. “I patrolled. Not much going on out there.”

Spike snorted, nodded. “Don’t think I left much for you.”

“You patrolled?”

“Gotta get my kicks in somehow, don’t I?” He threw back a mouthful of whatever he was drinking. “And I dunno about you, Slayer, but I find I need a spot of violence more after gettin’ bad news.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Oh, is it?”

“Yeah.” Buffy waffled a moment, then decided to press her luck by inching forward a step. “When you said you don’t know about me. That’s the lie. You know me…a lot.”

He tilted his head, studying her in that quiet way of his, as though he were weighing her sincerity. Maybe he was. If the tables were turned, she knew that was what she’d be doing. She’d been volleying back and forth between understanding him and insulting him since she’d arrived, infuriating him simply by existing in a space that belonged to someone else. That he’d been as patient with her as he had spoke to virtues she never would have assumed him to possess. She’d come here, leaned on him, and he’d let her. But he hadn’t rolled over for her, hadn’t let her forget who she was—and more importantly, who she wasn’t. His help had come with the not-so-tacit understanding that he was doing it less for her and more for the _her_ who belonged here.

The _her_ that she might have banished away forever, according to Anya. The Buffy who loved him back.

At once, coming here seemed like the stupidest thing she could have done, and definitely the cruelest. She was the reason Spike was hurting, after all. All because of a wish she’d made.

“Spike,” Buffy said, forcing herself to move a few paces toward him, “I’m… I’m sorry.”

His eyes narrowed.

“For… Well, for everything.” She looked down, turning the twig she’d fashioned into a makeshift stake over in her hands. “I know there’s nothing I can do. I know I ruined…”

But she trailed off, the concept still a bit too large for her—this thing birthed from her carelessness. That aching desperation that made her feel simultaneously hollow and weighted down by stones, every step a struggle, every breath a personal victory. She’d stood there at the Magic Box, holding a thing she knew was bad and managed to convince herself that the worst that could come of it would be better than the best offered by the hell that was living again. Not realizing she was condemning more than just herself when she dared whisper her wishes—somehow creating and destroying a world in the same stroke. Breathing this version of Sunnydale into existence and ripping away the Buffy who belonged here in one stupidly bold move.

She didn’t realize she was crying until a cool hand cupped her cheek, flicked a tear away. Buffy inhaled sharply and looked up, and Spike was there. He could be so quiet when he wanted to be.

“Not a one of ’em can understand what you were goin’ through,” he said, and she heard now how hoarse he was. Probably all the screaming he’d done back at Xander’s. Or maybe he’d come home and screamed some more. Now that he was closer, she saw the fatigue around his eyes, the telltale signs that he’d spent a good chunk of time crying, too. “You wanted to make it better for yourself, Slayer. Wager any of us woulda done the same.”

She’d been prepared for his rage and his heartbreak, not his kindness. The pressure at her chest intensified and her eyes filled with more hot, messy tears. “No. You wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, I would. If it hadn’t been for Dawn, I mighta gotten it in my head to see about hunting down a warlock or summat, see if the clock could turn back the other way.” He offered a pained grin at her confused blink, tucked her hair behind her ear. “Lots of things I thought about after I had you back. Remember lyin’ downstairs that first night when you were all tucked up against me, wonderin’ how the bloody hell I’d managed a lick of it without you. Runnin’ through what I’d do if I ever lost you again. Needed a plan, see.” Spike pressed his eyes closed, his face falling. He stumbled a step back and let out a long, shaky breath. “Shoulda known better. Always muckin’ up my plans, Summers.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Know it. Nothin’ to be done for it now.”

No, there wasn’t. Nothing that she could see, at least, with Willow expounding all the reasons why finding her home would be an uphill battle because its differences were so minute they hardly mattered, except to the people those differences affected. She couldn’t even search for a world without a Buffy, because the other Buffy might be living it up, embracing a life where she had everything she wanted. Sure, she’d inherit money problems, but what was money when compared to having back your surrogate father or knowing your sister was safe and where she belonged? What did anything material matter when she didn’t have the burden of a husband she no longer loved and the stress that came with living a secret life with the man she did?

Even if Willow managed to sneak a peek of the world that was Buffy’s home, would she recognize it? Or would everyone over there just be too darn happy?

The thought that any of that might be true was enough to make Buffy hate the Buffy everyone missed. And maybe that was why she said it—she wanted to do something the other one hadn’t. Get ahead, in whatever way she could.

“I’ll leave Angel.”

Spike’s eyes flew open and he whipped his head up. “Oh?”

“If I’m stuck here, I’ll do it. I’ll leave him.” She shifted her weight between her feet, not sure how to interpret his stare. “I can’t live with him and I can’t stay here forever. He’s waiting to be told what to do and that’s not fair to him.” More staring. Buffy flushed, feeling herself growing defensive. “What?”

“Nothin’. Just surprised, is all.”

“Why?”

“Well, you made that wish to get him here. Gonna give it up just like that?”

Again, this Spike’s propensity for being forthright caught her off guard. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected—perhaps that he would see an opening and seize it, having realized the Buffy who loved him was stuck, likely forever, somewhere else. And if she cleared the path for him to reclaim some of what he’d had before, maybe she would be deserving of the same tenderness and affection he’d given so freely before he’d learned the truth.

But he was right, too. At least in part. Painful as her last conversation with Angel had been, Buffy wasn’t sure she was ready to walk away from that part of herself just yet. She didn’t think she could say she loved Angel anymore, but that alone was enough of a revelation to leave her mind spinning. At some point, Angel had become more than just the person—he’d been an ideal, the impossible romance and the great love of her life. He’d embodied the very concept of love for her, and letting go of that meant letting go of a piece of herself, one she’d held on to for so long that even the thought of being without it was somewhat terrifying.

How fortunate for the other Buffy to have suffered that loss in degrees rather than all at once. Had she even missed it when she’d realized it was gone?

“I can’t be with him,” Buffy said at last, and that was perfectly true. A reflection of the reality she’d lived in ever since Angel had walked away. She couldn’t be with him so she would make the best of it, be with someone else. In this world, it didn’t matter that _someone else_ was Spike, because the normal boy route had blown up in her face rather spectacularly. “I can’t, so yeah. I’d leave him. This isn’t what I wanted.”

Spike said nothing for a moment, then nodded, his eyes losing some of their hardness. “Good on you.”

“Would that…change anything with us?”

“How’s that?”

“If I’m not with Angel and I’m here… You said you love me because I’m Buffy, so…would it?”

He fell quiet once more, his face unreadable, which was all kinds of frustrating. Not once in all the time she’d known him had Spike ever been this closed off.

“I love Buffy,” he agreed after a stretch. “Means I do love you, much as it mucks with my head. But you don’t love me.”

Buffy said nothing, just swallowed.

“Maybe if I hadn’t felt it, havin’ you with me would be enough.” He shook his head, though, like he didn’t believe it. “But I do know, Slayer. What we had was too good, hard as it was at times. Would rather keep the memory of that than try again with a bird who isn’t mine. With someone who doesn’t love me.”

“I think I could learn,” Buffy blurted, not sure why—not even sure she was telling the truth—only that the door closing on the possibility of there being anything with Spike, of him ever looking at her the way he had the other night, had her heart thumping and her pulse thundering and her head screaming in protest. “I—”

Spike held up a hand. The smile on his face was fond, though it somehow made the pain in his eyes worse. “Don’t,” he said, and that was all he said.

And though the urge was there to ignore him, press on, Buffy managed to smother it. She’d already done enough damage for one night and was fortunate to not have exhausted her welcome at his crypt. Any more and he might kick her out again, permanently this time.

The fight wasn’t one she would win, either. Not now. But maybe tomorrow.

It wasn’t like she was going anywhere anytime soon.

* * * * *

Buffy dreamed of home.

It was one of those _just happened_ dreams. No helpful guide to tell her how it was done, no blueprints left behind. She was just there. Standing in a downtown Sunnydale that was _her_ Sunnydale, and everything was okay again. Everything was right.

There were people to find. Giles and Dawn. People she’d lost in one way or another she wanted to hug and love. She’d tell them she was sorry, too, even if she didn’t know for what. The sensation of regret was real and deep, like a persistent itch that needed constant attention, and she couldn’t wait. She had to find them, and now she could. This was her Sunnydale, after all. The other one was nothing more than a bad memory.

Only when she pushed her way into the Magic Box, there was a Buffy already there, sitting with her friends and her sister. A Buffy who wasn’t her and definitely didn’t belong. Buffy stared at her for what seemed like a long time, then turned to her friends to let them know everything was fixed. This Buffy could have her world back now—the real Buffy had come home to stay.

Except her friends were scowling at her. Their mouths didn’t move but she heard voices loud and clear.

Go away, Dawn said.

Buffy blinked, stared at the other Buffy, who stared back with quiet calm. No, she wouldn’t go away. There had been a mistake.

No mistake, Giles told her solemnly. This Buffy was just better.

A real sister, Dawn agreed.

She brought the good candy, Xander threw in.

She said thank you, according to Willow.

But it wasn’t right. None of this was right. The other Buffy had a world—it might not be the best world, but it was hers, as much as this world was Buffy’s. She couldn’t have both.

The other Buffy gave her a pitying look. Shouldn’t have left, that look said. Finders keepers.

Then Spike emerged from the training room, and Buffy felt herself relax, but not a full relax. A relax that warned of oncoming danger. She didn’t know why, but she did know why, which was why she wasn’t surprised when he wrapped an arm around the other Buffy and kissed her. A kiss with a hard R rating, but one her friends observed with almost malicious satisfaction, all while Buffy could do nothing but stare as the world was ripped out from under her.

Thankfully, that was the moment she awoke.

Less thankfully—the story hadn’t changed. At least not on this side of the veil.

She was in Spike’s bed, same as she had been the previous day. A Spike who loved her, same as her own, but not. A Spike who had once again let her into his space rather than send her home to a husband she couldn’t talk to. Everything had come crashing down for him yesterday, hard and fast, and it might never be right again. And instead of hating her, cursing her for what she’d done—what she’d taken from him, even unknowingly—he’d made caring for her a priority. Not even that—a given.

“I can’t go home,” Buffy had said. “I’m not ready to talk to him.”

“Then don’t,” he’d replied. “Easier to get to work if you’re here, anyhow.”

“Work?”

He’d given her a blank look. “Gettin’ you back, of course.”

Buffy hadn’t said anything to that, just nodded. There were things she still needed to tell him—what Willow had said about looking for the other world, how it was feasible in theory if not in practice. And other things about where his Buffy might be, who she might be with, the possibility that she might not want to return. But she hadn’t said any of that, too exhausted and heartsick, and, if she were honest, worried that he would get angry again and take away her sanctuary.

So, they’d gone downstairs. Spike had shed his shirt but kept on his jeans. Precaution, he’d told her as they’d climbed into bed. He and Buffy had a very active sex life, which was why she’d awakened that day the way she had, with him kissing and caressing her, ready for an indulgent shag. When they got to wake up beside each other, they took full advantage.

Buffy must have made a face, for he’d asked if she’d prefer him to sleep somewhere else and she’d said no. Meaning it. Waking up the way she had, even if it had been meant for someone else, had been the best part of her day.

She’d been warm, safe, and loved, and that had been nice. Not hers, but nice.

But she hadn’t said as much, worried that he’d take it the wrong—or maybe the right—way. Instead, she’d told him she didn’t mind, and she didn’t want to kick him out of his own bed. She wasn’t that mean.

He’d nodded and climbed in beside her. And like the previous night, he’d kept the full mattress between them.

He was curled around her now, though. An arm tugging her back against his chest, his face pressed to her neck. Every few minutes, he’d breathe, and the sensation made her shiver. It wasn’t fair, that he breathed or that she felt it, or that those breaths weren’t for her—that none of this was.

She was in a world where Spike loved her best when he was asleep, because then he could pretend.

Pretending, apparently, was something she couldn’t do. Figments and flashes from the dream, which wasn’t doing the decent thing and fading from memory, danced across her mind in vivid Technicolor, and they echoed the harsh truths of her reality. She was stranded, possibly forever, in a world that wasn’t hers. A world where her friends, who were not her friends, whispered about her when she left a room. Where Angel could hardly stand the sight of her, and even Spike couldn’t say he would be what she needed to survive, because she wasn’t what he needed. Because she couldn’t be.

And if she did manage to find her way home, what then?

The other world had been difficult, suffocating most of the time, and she’d wanted out of it so much. She’d craved the quiet of death with such ferocity that she’d scared herself, both in the thoughts she’d entertained and the steps she’d refused to take. That she could have thoughts like that at all had made her wonder just how much of Buffy Summers had actually crawled out of that grave, as that was not the Buffy she remembered. And she’d tried—she’d wanted so badly to feel anything like herself. She’d mentally rehearse the things she’d say, the way she’d act when around her friends, as though she could trick her mind and body into forgetting that it wanted out of this world. But when it came time to do it, to be with her friends and Dawn and be Buffy, the weight of their expectation had dragged her down, down, down until the only sane thing to do was get as far away from them as she could.

Spike had been her lifeline. Her dark, safe harbor where she could sit with her misery without it overrunning her. Quiet was okay and being _not_ okay was also okay. Spike’s space was the only space she’d had that felt like hers, because he was hers, even if she never decided to claim him. He’d made her a promise and he’d stuck by it, before death, after death, and now after life itself.

The Spike curled around her now wasn’t hers. He said the right words, made the right calls, gave her what he could, but he belonged to a different Buffy. A Buffy he might never see again but remained loyal to all the same. A Buffy who might be living it up in the picture-perfect world she had been so eager to leave. Buffy had wanted to ask him last night what he thought about that, if he’d considered the fact that his Buffy might not mind which Spike she was with to the same degree—but then it wasn’t the same, was it? Both Spikes loved Buffy. Only one of those Buffys loved Spike back. And if it was true, if that Buffy had the run of the other world, then it seemed certain the place she’d been so eager to flee would no longer be available to her. Who would want her back when they could have a version of her who _was_ her, only less miserable?

Spike started to stir behind her, just as he had the previous morning. First with soft strokes of her belly, then with a low groan, his body sensing hers and not sensing anything else. She should move, push him back, wake him up and remind him that she wasn’t his Buffy. She should do that, but she didn’t want to, because this was nice. Being with him was nice. _Pretending_ was nice. And she could pretend. If she tried hard enough, she could make herself believe for a few stolen seconds that she was the one he wanted. That the world outside made sense and there was no reason to hide. No cause for the steady pulse of dread thrumming beneath her skin or the ache in her chest. He’d made her feel so good with so little just a couple of nights ago. She’d been pretending then, too. Why had she ever stopped?

She’d told him last night, hadn’t she? She could learn. She could try. She could become the Buffy they all wanted. It was inside her, wasn’t it? It had to be if the other Buffy had it. If, even amid the horror of being alive again, she’d managed some semblance of peace. All she had to do was dig down and find it. Fake it until she made it. Pretend until it wasn’t pretending anymore.

Would that be so bad?

Spike purred as if he heard her thoughts, thrusting himself against her backside. She only had seconds now before he awoke. Seconds to prove to him that she could be that Buffy too. She didn’t let herself think, couldn’t. She had to act, and so she did, twisting in his arms in such a way that she rolled beneath him. There was a second to register that his weight was considerable but not suffocating—that he didn’t leave her feeling dwarfed and smothered, and that she liked that—before she began peppering kisses along his bare chest. And at the first touch of her lips, Spike gave a little growl and began to breathe harder, like he was dragging her into him, which was fine with her because that was where she wanted to be.

“Mmm,” he rumbled in a low voice that was thick with sleep. “Frisky this mornin’, are we?”

Buffy nodded, dragging her mouth from his chest and pressing it against his. She had a vague memory of the way he’d kissed her at the Bronze—vaguer ones of the night they’d spent betrothed—but no memory did the feel of his lips and tongue justice. Apparently, Spike hadn’t been kidding. He did always wake up hungry for her and was not shy about showing her just how much. It was all she could do to keep up with him, nipping, sucking, exploring, and more and more and more as she reached for the clasp of his jeans.

Then Spike froze above her, and she knew.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, and then she was alone, cold, left staring up at the ceiling as the mattress dipped and whined. The loss that ripped through her was damn near crushing—her lungs felt full, but she couldn’t breathe. And Spike was on the other side of the bed, panting. When she turned to him, she found him staring at her with his eyes dark and filled with an apology she didn’t need, panting harder still.

“Might we oughta find a different place for you to sleep after all, love,” he said. “Seems I can’t help myself.”

Something burst inside of her. She didn’t want him to help himself. Couldn’t he see that?

“It’s okay,” Buffy rushed to tell him, exploding into movement before her mind could catch up with her. In a flash, she was against him again, struggling for air still, clawing for something she knew he could give if he just understood how much she needed it. If she could just show him. So that’s what she had to do—show him. Her mouth found the smooth planes of his chest once more, her hands wandering over cool flesh that seemed to tremble beneath her. She scraped her teeth along one of his nipples, and he shook with his low moan. “I want this, Spike. I want you.”

“Buffy—”

She was astride him the next second, desperate to stay ahead of the end of that sentence. He wanted her—she knew he did. Could feel it, both between her legs and in the weight of his stare. She just had to be fast, had to show him, had to be _her_. Before he found his voice again, she’d covered her mouth with his, seizing the waistband of his jeans with one hand and stroking over his erection with the other.

He gripped her shoulders. Not in a sexy-grabby way, but in a we-need-to-stop way, and she knew he meant to push her off. That he didn’t understand what this was, what she was trying to tell him. But she knew she was close. If she could just…

Buffy forced him back, harder than she intended but to the same effect. He hit the mattress, flat, and she scaled down his body. Quickly, quickly, finishing what she’d started with his jeans and pulling out his cock. Spike barked her name, sounding both stunned and desperate—maybe even as desperate as she was—and the syllables fell into another low moan as she wrapped her lips around him and pulled him into her mouth.

“Fuck, Slayer…” Spike bucked and gasped. When she looked up, she saw his head thrown back against the pillow, his face contorted in something between pain and ecstasy. But it only lasted a second—the span of a few sucks, still hurried, still determined to keep ahead of him until he melted entirely—and then he was up, the ecstasy gone, in its place something she couldn’t identify, and he had seized her by the shoulders again, harder than before, and shoved.

Buffy crashed against the floor with a jolt, and it was like her mind had burst free of some trance. Some different place she’d been, as though she’d been still halfway stuck in that dream, stranded and abandoned and frantic to cling to the only person that made living even a little tolerable. But now she was on the floor beside the bed, not entirely sure how she’d gotten there, her palms scraped from where they had skidded across the stone.

“Are you outta your mind?”

She blinked, shook her head to clear it, only that didn’t help. What the hell had just happened?

“Anyone ever tell you not to touch what's not yours?” Spike snapped, rounding the bed. He was still half-dressed, his cock tucked back inside his jeans. For some reason that surprised her—she couldn’t say why. Buffy blinked again, shook her head again, only now it was swimming. Like she was inside a fishbowl.

“Get out.”

Her heart dropped, nearly taking her with it. Buffy kept shaking her head, her temples pounding, her heart pounding too, so hard and so fast it hurt. Like her ribcage might just crack against the strain. And Spike was standing over her, glaring at her as he never had before. Never, over the course of countless fights, both verbal and physical. As though he didn’t know her—or worse, that he didn’t want to. As though she was something other than Buffy.

“Did I bleeding stutter?” Spike snapped. “Get the fuck out.”

It came slowly, the realization of what had just happened. The dream gone now, leaving nothing but the echoes of that desperation behind. Desperation that had included action.

Oh god, what had she done?

“I—” she tried to say, but words wouldn’t come. Spike had a hand around her arm now and the floor was moving. No, _he_ was moving—dragging her without care across the span of his bedroom. Up the ladder, even, so roughly that her hips and knees and gut struck the beams every few seconds, pounding bruises into her skin. If the chip fired, though, she didn’t see it. She didn’t even see him in full until he shoved her against the pillar in the middle of the crypt, where she landed hard enough her spine screamed in protest.

Still, Spike advanced in slow, even strides. A predator to prey. And everything was wrong.

“You think it’s that easy?” he said, now in a low growl. “That you could just be a stand-in? That that’s all she’s worth to me?”

Buffy shook her head, choking back a sob. “Spike, I—”

“I don’t care. Get out. This isn’t your place, Slayer. Never was. Get out.”

For a moment she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, did nothing at all. Just stared at him, willing herself to understand what had just happened. To catch up with her own spinning head, things that had been clear going muddy and vice versa, and at the center of it the core knowledge that she had done something she couldn’t come back from. That whatever she’d done had been beyond bad—it had broken what was already fragile between them in such a way that it could never be fixed.

Whatever she’d had here was over and it was all her fault.

Just like everything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A while ago, I shared with a group of authors that I was going to have a character commit a consent violation that troubled me because I also needed that character to be able to come back from it and still be someone we root for, the way Spike was in the series. For one reason or another, readers are often harder on female characters who do bad things than male characters, and Buffy is no exception. I desperately hope she managed to still come across as sympathetic here, at least as much if not more so than Spike in _Seeing Red_ , while still acknowledging Spike is the victim of a sexual assault.
> 
> This chapter was designed to meet a couple of aims—one being the obvious, to flip _Seeing Red_ on its head and present it the way Marti Noxon apparently intended for _Seeing Red_ to be presented. I also wanted to address a canon failing, in that when Buffy attempted to suck Spike off in _Gone_ as a means of changing his mind, it wasn’t less of a violation just because he was a dude. Lastly, I wanted to call out some of my older stories where sleepy-sexy times led to unexpected but consensual awake-sexy times.
> 
> There was some discussion with one of my betas on whether the story needed a full rape warning or an attempted rape warning, and what does or does not constitute rape. I’m going by Holly logic here and giving it a rape warning. Buffy didn’t get far, but she got far enough, in my opinion. And if the tables were turned and Spike had gotten that far, there would be no question. Whether or not it meets the legal definition is a separate issue. But for Buffyworld purposes, if I call Willow’s erasure of Tara’s memories a rape, then Buffy forcing sexual contact where it’s not desired certainly qualifies as well.
> 
> Thanks again to my betas, and everyone who cheered me on as I wrote this and the following chapter, not knowing exactly what was coming but knowing I was having a time getting it out.


	13. Such a painful trip to find out this is it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CW** : This chapter contains a suicide attempt. If you need to skip this week, I will summarize what happens in the note for next week's chapter. Be good to yourself.
> 
> This chapter is the darkest this fic will go. We'll start the uphill climb to better things next week.

The sun stung her eyes, offensively bright. Glaring, almost, like it knew what she had done.

What _had_ she done?

It was the monkey’s paw all over again—the path there, in her head, coaxing her forward, whispering little lies and assurances, lining up the steps she needed to take in order to reclaim her life. That aching emptiness that had been festering, exacerbated by her own dumb choices, by the solutions her fractured mind had managed to convince her were not only correct, but within her grasp if she was just daring enough to go seize them. That she could have a little Novocain for her bruised and battered soul by saying the right things, doing the right things, being the right Buffy.

Two different realities and her problem remained the same. The Buffy who had torn her way through the earth was far removed from the one her friends had laid inside it. She could do all the moves, imitate the voice to perfection, smile and laugh at all the right moments, and act her way through her own life, but the effort itself had been killing her by inches.

The only person she could be her authentic self around was Spike.

And look at what she’d done.

Buffy made it to the edge of Restfield before it hit her in full, the realization that she had been trying to seduce Spike, so single-minded in that objective, convinced that if he felt how she was the same as the woman he loved he would give her more of that mind-numbing bliss from two nights ago. All he had to do was let her show him, prove that she could be the Buffy he wanted in body if not in mind.

All he had to do was let her have her way, dammit.

The first tears cracked over her cheeks when her feet hit the pavement. Adultery had been on her list of things she’d thought she’d never do—unspoken and unacknowledged, a given, but there nonetheless. It existed in her sphere because it had touched her, made its impact on her, and informed her personal ethical code. Since it had hit her world in a dramatic fashion, its presence had been unavoidable. Learning that she had the capacity to do something she found so morally repugnant had been a hard blow. One she was still walking off, if she were being honest, even if she could see the way there. The circumstances that had led some version of herself to do what would have once been unthinkable.

What she had just done to Spike hadn’t been anywhere on her list of things she’d never do—it hadn’t been anywhere on her radar as a possibility. One of those things so laughably _not Buffy_ that to even mention it was a waste of time. She was just minutes away from it now, stumbling under the rays of that godawful sun from the scene of the crime, and she was still foggy on how exactly it had happened.

How she’d let it happen.

How she’d let herself do…that.

Already she felt the gremlins of self-preservation hard at work, cooking up justifications and excuses—a veritable chorus of things she could tell herself to assuage the terrible burden of guilt. Echoes of watcher lectures past, assuring her that vampires weren’t people, weren’t anything but monsters walking around in human skin, and whatever she’d done to a monster didn’t matter. Reminding her that Spike had commissioned a sex doll in her likeness, so it wasn’t like he was an innocent victim. Dragging her back to those first few seconds when he had clearly been into what she was doing, the bliss that had flirted across his face when she’d pulled him into her mouth. _It couldn’t have been that bad,_ some nasty part of her whispered. _He’s just mad he enjoyed it._

The thoughts bubbled up, ugly and cancerous, and she was disgusted with herself for having them. More disgusted at how good they felt, how the screaming inside her head quieted under their calm encouragement.

Perhaps a stronger Buffy would have let them carry her away. But this Buffy was not strong. She had never felt so weak in her life. And to give in to those thoughts would be a different sort of betrayal—a betrayal of the person she knew Spike was now, had known for a while if she were being honest with herself. Diminishing him to those things he couldn’t control while overlooking his handling of the things he could.

No one had made him carve out space for her. He’d been her quiet companion in her world, that underlying sense of _want_ and _love_ always there—unspoken and unacknowledged, but there all the same. Listening to her talk when she needed to talk and letting her sit when she needed the silence, expecting nothing from her and accepting her as she was without dressing her up to be someone else. More of that pull that had been there since Glory had made him her personal pincushion, that thrill she’d experienced on the stairs before the final battle when he’d told her that she treated him like a man, even if she hadn’t wanted to admit it.

Then this world’s Spike, who was so faithful to Buffy that not just any Buffy would do, but made sure she knew he loved her because of who she was. This world’s Spike who had let her back into his home—into his bed, even—after learning she might have destroyed everything that mattered to him.

She’d taken advantage of that—of him. Worse, she’d hurt him. She’d hurt someone she cared about.

Buffy wiped at her eyes, looking up just long enough to confirm she wasn’t about to wander into oncoming traffic. She didn’t know where she was going—where there was _to_ go. Not back to Xander’s, not with Anya there, and she wasn’t sure she could stomach being around Willow, which ruled out Tara as well. There was the Magic Box, she supposed, though she would be surrounded with reminders of Giles and her own stupidity. That left home—or the home that wasn’t home—and Angel.

The thought of facing him now, saddled with the weight of her own failures and knowing he would do little more than fire questions she could not answer, convinced her feet to halt all over again.

There was nowhere. Truly nowhere. No place for her in this world.

The tears came again, stronger this time, riding on the coattails of a sob. And Buffy found herself moving once more, though she wasn’t any clearer on her destination or if she even had one. Maybe she would just walk forever, or at least until her legs gave way and took her body to the ground, closer to the place where she belonged. The place she should never have left.

Why _had_ she left? There had been the panic, the fragments of old memories and older fears. She’d gazed up into the wrinkled face of the Master, the architect of her first death, as he giddily tossed shovelfuls of dirt into the open grave, knowing the end was coming and terrified of what came next. That seemed so long ago, as did the panic and horror. She remembered that she’d laughed when she’d heard Giles announce her impending death because laughing was the thing she did when she couldn’t scream.

Only a handful of years had passed between that moment and the one on the tower, when she’d looked to the horizon and understood the meaning behind her gift. There had been no panic then. Just calm understanding—of herself and her purpose, of everything Spike had tried to tell her one night in the alley outside of the Bronze. It had made sense to her as nothing else had, and every second she’d been back she felt like she had been searching for that moment of perfect clarity.

When she’d opened her eyes and found herself in a coffin, she should have just stayed there. Waited for death to roll around again and take her back where she belonged. Her time in this world had come to an end and she’d died knowing she had left it a better place than she had found it. Death hadn’t been her finale but her reward.

Buffy drew in a shaky breath, once again lifting her head. She was in front of her house. Apparently, her feet had taken it upon themselves to make the decision of _where to go_ for her and had brought her home. Only not her home. Nothing here was hers.

For a long moment, she stared at the front door, almost daring it to open. As though her loving husband had nothing better to do on a weekday than stare out the window for his wayward wife. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe Angel didn’t have a job at all—she’d certainly seen no evidence to suggest he did. Her throat ran dry as she again considered her options, as though the list had grown in the two minutes since she’d last gone through it.

As little as she wanted to see Angel, it was preferable to the alternatives. Angel at least had no love lost for this world’s Buffy and, aside from throwing her a few questions that she couldn’t answer, likely wouldn’t spend a lot of time reminding her of who she wasn’t. And maybe she’d get lucky—maybe he had no interest in talking to her at all. She was the one who had initiated the conversations they’d had thus far, and he had been seriously annoyed each time, like she was upsetting the status quo.

According to Angel, they only talked when Buffy had a criticism to level at him. Hopefully, the conversation they’d had the other night hadn’t changed that. She could sneak into Dawn’s room, close the door, curl up on the bed, and hope that, by the time she awoke, she had some idea of what to do.

Or better yet—she’d find herself back at Spike’s crypt, in his bed, ready to start the day afresh. The needy, desperate, pawing woman she’d been before nothing more than a trick of the mind—a nightmare to ensure her rest was as fraught and painful as her waking hours.

There was a word for someone who attempted to force themselves on someone else—a word prowling the perimeters of thoughts, lurking there and ready to pounce at a moment’s weakness. She managed to shove it back every time it came close, though she knew she couldn’t keep it at bay forever. Soon, that word and everything else she’d managed to push back would overpower her and she didn’t want to be outside when that happened.

She’d just have to chance it—hope that Angel would leave her alone or assume she was crying over something else when she crashed.

Buffy dragged herself up the driveway on legs that felt leaden, her heart hammering harder the closer she got to the door. It wasn’t until she was on the porch that she realized she didn’t have her keys with her. Hell, she didn’t have anything with her. Spike had been so insistent on getting her out of his crypt that she hadn’t had time to do much aside from wiggle into yesterday’s clothes and slam her shoes on her feet. Her keys, she imagined, were either on the weapons chest or somewhere in the lower level. There was also the suitcase she’d packed a couple of nights ago, though she wasn’t particularly attached to anything in it, as the contents had been selected by a different Buffy. She pursed her lips, considered the doorbell—really didn’t want to resort to it, as that would only lead to more questions—then wondered if this world’s Buffy had kept the spare hidden in the same place she did.

There was a potted plant beside the door. Not the same one as the one at home, granted, but its presence there gave her reason to hope. Buffy knelt and dug her fingers into the soil, trying to ignore her tight chest and the way her hand seemed to tremble. It only took a second, she was sure, but by the time she felt the familiar grooves of the key against her thumb, it seemed hours had passed. She straightened again on wobbly legs, drew in a fortifying breath, and unlocked the door.

Turned out, all her concerns had been for naught. No one was home. She knew it immediately, that slayer sense kicking in. Vampires could smell people and hear their heartbeats, and slayers just intuitively knew things, she guessed. Wherever Angel was, it wasn’t here.

_Thank god._

It wasn’t likely anything else would go right today. Or tomorrow. Or for days and days and days. And the relief at finding the house vacant was short-lived, accompanied by the reminder that he would have to come home sometime. She would have to speak with him sometime. Her friends would come calling sometime. Spike would…

Buffy closed the door behind her, trying and failing to stifle a fresh wave of tears. All her _sometimes_ were claimed by versions of people she loved who didn’t love her back. Or who only loved her because she was a version of someone they loved without question.

A version of herself who lived here, in a house devoid of her mother’s style or artwork, save a few small things that were less about aesthetic and more about practicality. The desk in the living room. The dining room table. The couch across from the television. The bits and pieces that had made this Joyce Summers’ home were missing. No vases on the mantel or on the small table beside the armchair. No paintings on the walls, no spread of magazines on the coffee table, no knickknacks of any kind. The wall above the desk was taken up by a large black and white rendering of Buffy and Angel on their wedding day, similar to the one she’d discovered in her nightstand upstairs. She’d noticed it before, of course, the first night here when she’d crashed on the sofa, but hadn’t thought much of it then. Just an image of a different Buffy, one with a beaming smile and love in her eyes, gazing up at the man she’d thought was her everything. A Buffy who couldn’t conceive of a world in which she had Angel but was anything but happy—a world where she’d fall in love with a vampire she thought she hated.

What was it like to live in a house with an entire wall dedicated to her greatest personal failure? Why hadn’t she taken it down? Why hadn’t Angel? From everything he’d told her and what she’d seen, this was where he spent most of his time. A large reminder of what should have been the happiest day of his life was like cutting an old wound open every day, never letting it heal.

But then she knew, didn’t she? He wanted her to say it. Tell him the marriage was over and that it wasn’t just him who had given up on it. Take some responsibility for the fact that things hadn’t turned out the way they’d thought it would. He wanted her to grant him his freedom, and as twisted as that was, Buffy understood it, too.

She’d told Spike she would break up with Angel if she was stuck here. Could she, using another woman’s reasons? Or maybe she could just confess that she wasn’t his Buffy and see if he would be willing to give their marriage a shot. Wipe the slate clean for them both and start over. The second the thought burst across her mind, she felt another rush of welcome relief, her heart skipping. God, that would be easy. Tell Angel that while this world’s Buffy had fallen out of love with him, he had remained important enough to _her_ that his presence in her life had been the linchpin in the wishes that had brought her here. The most significant change that had informed everything else was his to claim.

But it was only a second, that thought. Then she came back to reality, surrounded by the evidence of how much she and Angel just didn’t work. There was no reason to think that their problems would be any different from those with his original Buffy. That he resented her taking away his destiny, had somehow squandered all the life insurance money, shipped Dawn off without thought—those weren’t things she could just overlook.

And she’d never once experienced anything like the peace Spike had given her. That night at the Bronze when she’d been confused and lost had been the single most explosive sexual encounter of her life, including the time a bunch of ghosts forced her and Riley to screw for hours on end. But it had been what came next that cemented something for her. How he’d seemed to know what she needed, made her feel safe and supported and loved—then, later, seeing just what lengths he would go to in order to carve space for Buffy in his life. Once upon a time, Angel had balked at the idea of her having a drawer at his place. Spike had remade his place to be Buffy’s, top to bottom.

Even when they had been their happiest—whatever day that had been, she thought with a snort—Angel had never made her feel anything remotely similar to the way Spike made her feel simply by showing her how much he wanted her in his life.

She didn’t want whatever she’d once had with Angel. She wanted what this world’s Buffy had with Spike.

And she’d just done something that would ensure she’d never get it.

This time when the tears came, she didn’t try to fight them. She couldn’t. It was done—the worst thing she’d _ever_ done, and she couldn’t make it right.

Somehow, Buffy managed to convince her legs to carry her upstairs. She didn’t know what she planned to do once she got there, but she couldn’t stand in Angel’s space anymore with the lie they had hanging on the wall. At first, when she reached the landing, she thought again about sneaking into Dawn’s empty room and curling up on the bed, but her feet turned toward the room that should be her mother’s. Or Willow and Tara’s. There was something in there, her mind whispered, that she needed to do. Or at the very least see. One more question in an endless series, but this one being something she could at least answer.

It wasn’t until she was at the nightstand that she realized exactly what that was.

The keepsake box—the one she’d discovered alongside the photo of the wedding day that had never been. She wanted to see what was inside it. She still had no idea where the key was, but she found she didn’t care. There wasn’t much _care_ left in her at all. Everything she’d touched had been ruined, so why not this?

Buffy pulled the box out of the drawer and settled cross-legged on the bed, and without waiting for second or third thoughts, pried back the lid, which gave with a whine and a hard _crack_. And when she turned her stinging eyes downward, she felt she must have known since he’d first mentioned it. There was no shock at her discovery, just acceptance.

It was full of letters. All from him. Organized in such a way that they told a story.

> _Beatrice—_
> 
> _Missing you something fierce. Think you can steal away tomorrow night?_
> 
> _\- Benedick_

* * *

> _Beatrice,_
> 
> _Think it went well. Talked you up as much as I could without sounding like I’m on your leash. Also, just so you know, I’m pretty sure that Lydia bird has a fang fetish. Spent the whole sodding interview making eyes at me. Not that I can blame her. I am a good-looking bloke._
> 
> _\- Your Benedick_

* * *

> _Beatrice,_
> 
> _Had a thought. Would be a right shame if a certain little sister wandered into the Big Bad’s crypt after dark. You’d have to come fetch her then. Maybe rough me up a little. You know, for show. Know you’re a busy little soldier at the moment, but I’ll take whatever I can get._
> 
> _\- Benedick_

* * *

> _Beatrice—_
> 
> _Might keep that useless lump of yours indoors for a bit. His masterpiece is in town, aiming to turn him back to his old self and recruit yours truly if she can. Told her I’m not interested; she sussed out you’re the reason right quick. But if she catches Sir Forehead out and about, nothing to stop her from turning him back into his big bad self._
> 
> _Second thought, go ahead and let him out. Tell him to take long, meandering walks and the like. Preferably down dark alleys. At least then you could kill him._
> 
> _Know you won’t, though. Got to be the bloody hero._
> 
> _\- Benedick_

* * *

> _Beatrice,_
> 
> _Thanks for letting that mad chit toss me out the sodding window. Had to let her close, didn’t I? Couldn’t tell her that the only girl I want was the one ignoring me unless her useless husband wasn’t looking. Besides, he’d know if I hadn’t come onto her. Appearances, yeah? That’s what you tell me._
> 
> _Though I think that bird might have been a robot. Did you get that impression? Be sure to tell me_ in person _so I can snog all that adorable jealousy right off that gorgeous mouth of yours._
> 
> _\- Benedick_

* * *

> _Beatrice,_
> 
> _Know there’s nothing good to say to you right now so I won’t try. She was a good lady, your mum. Better than this sorry world deserved._
> 
> _Come beat me up sometime. Won’t make you feel better, but I imagine it won’t make you feel worse, either._
> 
> _\- Benedick_

* * *

> _That sod doesn’t deserve you and you bloody know it. You deserve to be happy and you know you only get that with me. Don’t do this.—Benedick_

* * *

> _Beatrice—_
> 
> _Get it through your thick skull. Not going anywhere. Don’t care how many times you break my heart._

* * *

> _God, I miss you.—Benedick_

* * *

> _What makes it worse is knowing how much you’re hurting. It kills me.—Benedick_

* * *

> _I do love you. Might not be the smartest thing I’ve done but it is the best.—Benedick_

* * *

> _It wasn’t supposed to be you. Never you. God, why did you have to do it?_
> 
> _Don’t tell me. I know why. It’s who you are._
> 
> _But it should’ve been me._

* * *

> _Beatrice,_
> 
> _You gave me a reason. If you were still here, I could kill you for that._
> 
> _What you told me at the end was everything. Never got to tell you what it meant to me. Idiot that I was, I thought we had time. Thought I’d be quick enough, clever enough, to save the bloody day. Be the hero for once. Got in my head that it’s that easy. Flipping the script, making the choice, doing the right thing, and all that rot. Like I said, love, I’m a thick git._
> 
> _I’m going after her. Going to keep my promise if it bloody kills me. Not the sort of man who turns down a challenge. Getting her will be the easy part. It’s what comes next that terrifies me. I don’t want to do any of this without you. But I will. Man of my word._
> 
> _Miss you so much I can barely stand it. You belong in the sun, not in the earth._
> 
> _I love you. Today and tomorrow and forever and ever._
> 
> _Always,_
> 
> _Your Benedick_

Buffy lowered her hands, which were trembling too hard to do her much good, anyway. The letters she held tumbled back to the mattress in a haphazard arc. There were more pages in the box—those that had likely been penned after the resurrection, though she couldn’t stand to read anymore—and even a few bits and scraps torn here and there from those notes that hadn’t been saved in whole. Each of them bearing the same words— _Love, Benedick._ Every time Spike had given her his love, this world’s Buffy had saved it. Locked it up in a special place to keep with her always, even when she had to climb into her marital bed. She could see it plainly—the other Buffy’s head on the pillow, her body positioned away from Angel so her face and heart were pointed in the right direction.

This was what she’d tried to steal at Spike’s crypt. What she’d deluded herself into thinking she could fake until it became natural.

_“You think it’s that easy?”_ he’d barked. _“That you could just be a stand-in? That that’s all she’s worth to me?”_

Buffy swallowed, the pressure in her chest rising to the point she didn’t think she could fight any longer. Instead, she choked out a sob and buried her face in her hands and gave in. First came the rush of self-loathing, that familiar bastard that had become even more familiar as she’d forced herself to keep moving forward. The inability to be Buffy, bounce back, give herself over to happiness and gratitude, fight her way through the pain as she always had. After Acathla. After Angel had left her. After Riley. After her mom. Whatever didn’t kill her—and given that being resurrected was the opposite of being killed, she should be stronger.

But she hadn’t been. And the world had kept turning, kept demanding, kept insisting, and she’d been trapped inside of it, clawing and desperate for something to make her feel anything like herself.

And look where that had gotten her. Trapped in a version of her world—one she’d destroyed without thought or effort. The Buffy who had kept these notes—these stupid, obvious, why-even-bother-with-a-codename notes—had been struggling too. Spike had told her so. She’d been struggling, but she’d been managing. Of that, Buffy had little doubt. It might have sucked but she would’ve clawed her way out with something more than a vague half-effort. She had someone.

Without thought or care, Buffy had ruined that. She’d ruined it for both of them—the version of her who lived here and the Spike who was her partner. All the thoughts she’d had before, the speculation of what the other Buffy might be doing in her world, went up like smoke, leaving behind a truth she’d been too bitter to recognize. Thinking of this other Buffy as a different entity was a convenient way to create distance, but Buffy knew damn well how _she_ would feel if she’d been plucked from her world and placed in another. It would be strange, perhaps even thrilling, but it would be a lie. Deep down, she would always know—her sister was somewhere else, missing and in need of rescue. The vampire she’d fallen in love with might exist on both sides, but their shared history would be lost. A thousand precious memories, even the ones that hurt, scattered and gone. And while Giles might be alive, he wasn’t her Giles.

Picking up and starting over in a new world wasn’t an option when it meant abandoning the people she loved.

There would be the temptation to ride it out, of course, to see if she could live with herself, but the answer wouldn’t change. As hard as living was right now, she’d take difficult and real over easy and fake. And if this world’s Buffy managed to work out that she wasn’t in the right world, then she would fight with everything she could to get back. She would try and try and try until the trying killed her all over again.

Buffy was sick of trying. She didn’t want to anymore. She was done.

That’s when the thought arose, a solid thing amid a sea of uncertainty. Not triggered by anything, just originating like it had been there all along. Like it had been waiting for her to notice it.

_Angel has a gun._

Buffy straightened, every inch of her going rigid with awareness. For a long second, she just sat with it. Let it linger in the space of her mind, see what would happen to the thoughts around it. The answer was nothing. Nothing at all happened. The thought didn’t suggest or nudge or push. It simply existed, making an observation that could easily be innocuous. Nice weather we’re having, you got a haircut, Angel has a gun. A piece of news that wasn’t news—just a random fact among many. But Angel did have a gun and he had it in this room. Just a couple of feet to the left of where Buffy sat, surrounded by love notes that weren’t hers, in a bed that wasn’t hers, in a house that wasn’t hers.

_Angel has a gun._

Score one for random observations.

But it wasn’t random. And, after a moment, she realized it wasn’t quiet, either. Not the way other random thoughts were—those that skated by, minute observations of everyday life that faded just as quickly as they materialized. It was like the word that had come to her earlier, ugly and abrasive, and it didn’t move at all. Rather, it rooted itself in the foundation of her mind, forcing her attention to remain with it. Joining forces with that other word, which also grew louder until she could hear nothing else. Until her ears were ringing and her face had gone hot and her heart had taken off at a pace that hurt.

Thoughts that rooted were thoughts that became ideas, she knew, and this was no different. Soon, her mind was full of thoughts that were fractured and disjointed, split between the shock of what she was thinking and something that felt like a marriage of fear and excitement. The room began to spin, overwhelming her with possibilities that left her almost giddy with relief and terrified because of it. She’d been here before—dragged herself down the pathway of the easy out, just to remind herself that it existed should she want to use it. But it had always felt distant, roped off from everything else she had labeled _viable options_. Comforting to know it was there, carefully protected by the line she’d always thought she’d never cross.

But then, there were so many lines she’d always thought she’d never cross. What was one more broken promise?

Buffy turned her head just a fraction so she could see the nightstand out of her periphery and her heart somersaulted. It would be quick. No time for second thoughts. No more teetering, no more yo-yoing, no more mounting dread. What happened when Angel came home wouldn’t matter. That she’d done something unthinkable—done _that word_ —to Spike wouldn’t matter, either. The edges of this world she’d crashed would remain unchanged, and if they did manage to bring the other Buffy back…

Well, there would be a mess for her. But a mess she was equipped to handle.

And before she realized it, before the idea had completed its journey to decision, she was moving toward the nightstand, opening the drawer, and there it was. Just as she had found it that first night, small yet intimidating, much like herself. Able to do a world of damage with barely any effort, also much like herself. She wrapped her hand around the grip, hesitated, then pulled the gun out and into her lap.

It would be easy. It would be over. And that was all she wanted.

Buffy had never fired a gun. Everything she knew about guns came courtesy of James Bond movies. But then, she didn’t need to be an expert—she just needed to make sure the business end was pointed in the right direction before she squeezed the trigger.

Her heart still hammering, she released a low breath, focused on the sensation of air leaving her lungs, of the way it sounded when it rode through her lips. The last two times she’d died, she hadn’t had time to soak in that she was living her last moments, that she wouldn’t blink or laugh or sneeze ever again. It had just happened, there one minute and gone the next. And then there again.

Not this time. She doubted even Willow would be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again if Humpty Dumpty blew his brains out.

Buffy barked a hard laugh that dissolved into a sob. Her chest felt ripped open, vulnerable and exposed, throbbing with something that transcended pain. The steady, crippling weight of her mounting failures and regrets, the bad decisions that had led to even worse ones, dragging her across what had been not a perfect life but one well-lived. Well-lived but not well-died. Third time’s the charm. 

She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, then placed the cool end of the barrel along the underside of her jaw.

_I’m sorry._

The next few seconds were a blur. She sat stranded between worlds in one, then knocked onto her side the next, under the weight of something snarling and heavy. It seized her wrist, its grip punishing and viselike, and twisted the gun out of her hand, all the while barking her name in a voice that sounded distant. Buffy experienced this in a time that was outside of her own, the weight of the vampire straddling her waist, the mattress whining and dipping, sending the notes she’d plundered in a scattered arc across the comforter. Spike spinning open the gun’s chambers so that little missiles of death spilled down beside the overturned keepsake box. Then, as soon as he was certain it was harmless, pitching the thing aside so that it clattered loudly and uselessly against the floor. And then it was just the two of them.

“Have you lost your head?” Spike snarled, seizing her by the shoulders and shaking her. But, she saw, coming back to herself by degrees, the fury in his voice didn’t reach his face. His eyes were wide and terrified, his skin so pale his lips looked blood red. And he sat there over her, on top of her, his legs on either side of hers, his chest rising and falling like he had finished a marathon. He stared at her and she stared back, unsure what had happened or why, everything spiraling and nothing making sense, but he was here, and she was still alive.

He was here. He’d come after her.

Buffy blinked up at him and broke.

“I’m sorry,” she sputtered as the world crashed back. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Spike. I—”

Everything tilted again, taking her with it. Then, somehow, she was on his lap on the bed, against his chest, crying into the cotton of his T-shirt. Crying but also not crying, for crying was something she’d done before. She hadn’t done this, hadn’t felt this. This throbbing sore within herself, raw and self-inflicted, made worse because she didn’t know how to stop.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, hating the words for being so weak. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it. I just wanted… I _wanted…_ ”

But that was as far as she got. Defining what she wanted was too daunting a task, almost impossible, and her stupid mouth had done enough damage.

As it was, Spike seemed to understand.

“I know, pet,” he murmured, dragging her hair away from her sweaty face. “I know.”

No surprises there. He always did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A love letter to my betas: Niamh, Kimmie Winchester, and bewildered
> 
> All told, these last few chapters have been the most difficult writing I’ve ever done, and I couldn’t have done it without my betas. I gave them all ample warning about what was coming so they could opt to skip out if this would be too triggering. Two of them have struggled with depression of this magnitude and I worried it might be too much for them to read. At the same time, though, their input was invaluable because they, more than anyone else, would be able to tell me if I was handling it correctly. Mental health issues, sensitivity, and awareness are hugely important to me. I’ve been outspoken about my struggles with OCD for years (OCD being the real, debilitating anxiety, not the funny/quirky shit you saw on Monk). In many ways, I can relate to Buffy as she is right now. I have been depressed—severely depressed, but I’ve never been Buffy’s level of depressed, though, nor have I contemplated the things she contemplated in this chapter. Getting it right, being true to her, to depression, and to that sense of utter hopelessness was crucial. Still, my concern was foremost my betas’ mental wellbeing. No fic is worth putting yourself through mental stress or anguish.
> 
> Suffice to say, that my betas dismissed the offers to skip this chapter means the world to me. That they brought their own experiences to this chapter to help me through to the end is a debt I can never repay. I am so grateful to them. They are superheroes. So thank you, ladies, for your emotional labor.
> 
> I should also add I asked permission to be gushy in my thanks from the two who have struggled with depression, as I know this is a sensitive subject that people aren’t necessarily at ease being open about. I wanted to give them the praise they deserve but not if it would make them uncomfortable. Everyone’s mental health journey is different and should be handled with care.


	14. I just love you for the things you couldn't change, though you tried

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who chimed in after last week's chapter. I know it was difficult, and I so appreciate your thoughts and feedback. I am still in the process of responding to reviews and hope to catch up this weekend.
> 
> For this chapter, thank you to my betas, bewildered, Niamh, and Kimmie Winchester.
> 
>  **For anyone who needed to skip last week, here's the promised summary** : Buffy left Spike's crypt, having hit her lowest point. With nowhere else to go, she went back to Revello Drive, surprised to find it empty. Upstairs, she finally opened the keepsake box and discovered that Para!Buffy had kept all of Spike's love notes, signed Benedick. She also remembered Angel kept a gun in his nightstand, and in her despair, decided to use it on herself. Spike arrived in time to keep her from pulling the trigger, and Buffy broke down in his arms.

Everything since waking up in Spike’s bed seemed like a dream. Or a nightmare. Definitely a nightmare. Or worse than a nightmare, actually, like something else had hijacked her mind and body, made her think and do things she would never think or do under normal circumstances.

Except she had done those things, thought those things, and blaming circumstances was an easy out—one she’d love to take but knew would be a lie. She just wanted something, anything, to point this feeling toward, much the way she’d hunted for a mystical reason behind her mother’s tumor, desperate for a villain she could identify and take down as she did everything else. Now felt a bit like that, except the only villain in proximity was apparently herself.

“How did you get here?” Buffy asked, watching Spike as he snatched up the notes she’d scattered across the bedspread. She had no grasp of how much time had passed since he’d tackled her onto her side and ripped the gun away. Hours, it seemed, but likely just minutes. He’d held her as she’d sobbed out the worst of it, until she’d felt depleted of anything she could have once called energy. Maybe that had been his intent. Wear her down so much he could leave her without fear of what she might do in his absence. It was possible, but somehow she didn’t think so. He wouldn’t have made the effort to come if it was just to leave again.

“Walked,” he replied shortly.

“Sun’s out.”

“Never stopped me before.”

No, it hadn’t. But she also hadn’t heard the front door slam or the air crackle with the telltale sign of a smoking blanket, so he likely hadn’t taken a daytime stroll.

She thought for a moment. “Sewers?”

“Got it in one. Nice line goes right to your house. Dead useful the times I had to scarper before being caught by the mister.”

“We’ve—you and Buffy have done stuff here?”

He gave her one of those half-shrugs, still focused on picking up the notes. “Not really. Place stinks too much of Angel to get my motor revvin’, if you’re wonderin’. But nights I walked the lady home after a night’s patrol and he wasn’t around, I’d steal a snog. Had to make a quick exit more than once—easier when you know where to go.”

“So…why did you come today?”

At that, Spike finally paused and looked up, his brow furrowed as though he didn’t understand the question. “Needed me, didn’t you?”

Maybe she wasn’t as empty as she thought. The words had her chest tightening all over again. Buffy blinked eyes that were already raw from crying against the sting of renewed tears. “I don’t deserve that.”

“Bollocks.”

“What I did to you…” She pressed her eyes closed to keep from dissolving all over again. She knew it wouldn’t work but couldn’t help trying. “I don’t have excuses. You were right to kick me out.”

He said nothing for a long beat, then sighed and started rustling around once more. “Maybe. Also right to come after you.”

“Spike—”

“It’s over, Slayer. All right? It happened. We put it behind us.”

Buffy’s eyes shot open and she jerked forward. “We put it behind us?” she echoed. “Spike, that was the worst thing I’ve ever done to anyone. The worst thing I’ve ever done, period, and I did it to you. I can’t just put it behind me.”

He looked at her again, tilting his head. “Not with that attitude, I suppose.”

“That _attitude_? Do you hear yourself? I—”

“I bloody well know what you did.” At last, now, he sounded angry. Not furious, though. Not like he had been when he’d torn into the room. “Was there, wasn’t I? Been there from the start. And yeah, pet, I wanted to rip your throat out.”

She waited for him to say more, certain it was coming. That had sounded like the start of a speech, not the end of one. But he didn’t continue, just shoved the last of the notes into the keepsake box and closed the lid firmly.

“Where was this?” he asked, holding it out to her, his tone carefully neutral. All of him careful, now that she saw it. His jaw was pulled tight and his expression guarded. Had he known that his Buffy had kept all his notes?

Buffy took the keepsake box, dropping her gaze to where the wood had cracked and splintered. “I broke it,” she whispered. “Didn’t know where the key was.”

He nodded. “Can see that.”

“I’m breaking all her things.”

Spike released a deep sigh, sagging onto the mattress as though in surrender. “Your things, pet,” he muttered. “All your things.”

“They aren’t mine.”

“No one else here, is there?”

“Spike…”

But she didn’t say any more. Couldn’t.

Fortunately, he didn’t seem to have the same problem.

“Been a right trip for you. All of this. You wishin’ yourself somewhere better than what you had.” Spike rolled his head back, sighing again, performing all of his uncanny human impressions. “Everything’s on its head now, yeah? Got the world ripped out from under you. Makes sense you’d try to reach for a bit of cold comfort when it’s offered.”

“But it wasn’t,” she sputtered. “It wasn’t _offered._ You told me you didn’t want… That it wasn’t enough that I’m Buffy. Spike, I… What happened at the crypt was rape.”

Amazingly, as though she’d said something funny, he snorted, then looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Been raped a time or two, pet,” he said. “Didn’t feel anythin’ like that.”

“What? Who—”

“Who do you think?”

Well, now that she’d asked, the answer was right in front of her. He was in his rapist’s house, sitting on his rapist’s bed. Like it was nothing.

“I didn’t know,” she murmured, as though that weren’t perfectly obvious.

“Yeah, well, not somethin’ I make a point to advertise, myself,” Spike replied dryly. “Long time ago, that was. Puttin’ the new boy in his place, make sure he knew where he fit in the family line. Point is, love, what you did—”

“What I did was no less rape than what he did.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, it was.”

“How?”

“Dunno. Just was. And bein’ I’m the one it was done to, wager my say oughta be final, yeah?”

She scowled, feeling the familiar stirrings of annoyance, which surprised her so much she nearly jolted. That she could go from the place she’d been just a short while ago to a place as welcome and known to her as irritation with Spike made everything seem stranger. “So you really just want to forget about it?” she asked, setting the keepsake box aside. “That I forced you—or tried to.”

“No sense dwellin’.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“I know that. Also knew you’d be in a right state about it.” Spike hissed out a long breath, slow as though he were trying to keep the reins on his patience. She didn’t know when she’d come to know Spike well enough to determine his mood through the breaths he released, but she was certain she was on the money. Something only confirmed when he continued in a low undertone, “When I saw you with that… Fuck, baby, you nearly gave me a bloody heart attack.”

She didn’t know how to respond—to the words, the casual endearment, or the larger thing he wasn’t saying. So she decided to be pedantic. “You can’t have a heart attack.”

“Tell that to the ache in my chest.” He turned to her, and she was sure he’d never looked more serious. “Won’t be a prat and ask why.”

“And I guess I shouldn’t be a prat either and ask why you stopped me.”

He narrowed his eyes into a glare. “You know why.”

“Because you don’t know what will happen to your Buffy if I kill this body?”

“Because I love you, you infuriating chit.” In a flash, he was back on his feet and towering over her, nostrils flared and eyes blazing. “You think I could stand it, knowin’ that I’d sat back and let you die no matter what sodding universe you’re from?”

“After what I did to you—”

“Knock it.”

“No, I can’t!” And then she was on her feet, too, at once infused with a shock of energy. Maybe it wasn’t fair, maybe she should listen to him and just forget it, but forgetting wasn’t in her blood. No matter what Spike wanted to call what had happened at his crypt—or what he didn’t want to call it—she knew what that had been. What she had done. The word slithered under her skin, some place where normal water and soap wouldn’t be able to scrub it out. And what was worse, she could still feel the desperation, the need to feel something other than worthless or empty or _other_ , which was all she was in this world. Not quite Buffy. Close but no cigar.

“I can’t _knock_ what I did to you,” she continued, her voice rough. “Believe me, I would love to. I tried to be mad at you, to blame you or tell myself it was okay because you’re a vampire so who cares? Or that you were into it—you just didn’t want to be. The entire walk from your place here, I tried and tried to just brush it off but I can’t because that’s not who I am.” Her sinuses began to sting anew, and she cursed them and her frail human body and its frail human reactions. She’d already cried so much today the thought of shedding more tears actually hurt, but hell if that stopped her eyes from filling. “I don’t know who I am. And I did. I remember knowing exactly who I was. It was so clear there. It was so clear and then I died and whatever…whatever Willow brought back…”

Spike moved forward and braced his hands on either side of her neck so that she couldn’t look down or away. “Bite your tongue,” he said in a low rumble. “She brought _you_ back. Every sodding inch of you is Buffy Summers. I’d know it if you were anything else.”

She shook her head—or tried. He didn’t loosen his grip. “Buffy Summers doesn’t rape people.”

“I told you—”

“It might not have been what Angel did, but it was still force. It was still something you didn’t want.”

At that, he didn’t reply, but his jaw tightened like he was biting back something. And she imagined she knew what that was—that wanting wasn’t the issue. The same as it had been when he’d awakened, hard and ready, body knowing all the right cues even if the player had changed. Or not changed, which made everything more confused than it had a right to be. But none of that mattered—all that mattered was that Spike had told her no, made it clear that only the Buffy who lived here with him would do. She’d known that when she’d rolled over, and she’d done it anyway, believing in some warped fashion that perhaps if he felt just how similar they were, the fact that she was a different Buffy wouldn’t matter anymore.

Finally, Spike drew in a deep breath, seeming to have landed on the words he was searching for. “Don’t think you’ve given yourself enough credit,” he said slowly. “Handlin’ it as well as you have.”

“Handling what?” But she knew what—could see the answer there in his eyes, and she didn’t believe it. “The Heaven thing isn’t an excuse for anything I’ve done.”

“You don’t figure?”

“I shouldn’t have come back from Heaven a _worse_ person than I was before. I’m not all that hot on theology, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.”

He dropped his hands, and though the pressure there had been cool against her skin, she still shivered at the loss of it.

“Right,” he said thickly. “Not supposed to work that way, love. Not supposed to be a return trip at all. Told you my lady’s had a rough go of it. Think this is anythin’ she hasn’t thought? All that rot about havin’ come back wrong—things she tells me she feels, thoughts she has, how bloody angry she is with her mates about what they did to her. Bloody hell, the nights she gets to stay with me, she wakes up screamin’ half the time, dreamin’ that she’s back in that coffin.”

“Has she raped you?”

Spike rolled his eyes, made as though he intended to grab her again, then took a step back. “Not the kinda relationship we have, pet. But I told you she’s hungry for pain. The reason she started askin’ for my fangs, innit? Thrown a punch or two, too, when it gets to be too much. Has nowhere else to put it, does she? Can’t take it out on her chums and it’s not like anythin’ around here gives her a decent night’s brawl. Was right horrified the first time and spent a good hour or so fussin’ over me like I’m a bloody infant. Tell you what I told her—I can take it.”

“You…let her hit you?”

Amazingly, he smirked. “Nights when she needs it? Fuck yes, I do. Though I get in a few licks myself. Needs a good tussle, she does, get all that pain out. Wager you do too.”

“But…” Buffy blinked. “That doesn’t hurt? The chip?”

He shook his head. “Intent isn’t there to do her damage. Doesn’t trigger for that reason, I expect. Besides, love, creatures like us? It’s bloody foreplay is what it is.”

“Creatures?”

“Just the way you’re built,” he continued, frowning, perhaps, at the waver in her voice. “Told me you used to sneak out to get in a good night’s slay when Angel failed to give it to you good. Needed the rush to relax. ’Course, on your side, mighta been different. You—”

“No, I did.” Countless nights she’d sneaked off to rush through the cemetery, leaving Riley none the wiser. Hunting, as she’d later told Giles. The drive hadn’t necessarily worried her, but it also hadn’t not-worried her. She’d known there was something out there she needed and she’d gone after it. And it had just gotten worse after Dracula, like he’d awakened something primal inside of her that had always been there, but curled up and docile until the moment his blood had hit her lips. “That makes me a creature?”

Spike’s eyes softened with understanding. “Not the way you think. But you’re not exactly like your mates, are you?”

“That’s all I ever wanted to be.”

“Buffy, you’re not like them. You’re… Fuck, you’re bloody extraordinary.” Now he did step forward, again lifting a hand, though not to force her eyes to remain on him. Instead, he ran his curled fingers along her cheek, exhaling a shuddering breath as he did. “Were before. Best I’ve ever seen, and not just talkin’ your moves. It’s in how much you care—what you’re feelin’ right now, awful as it is, you feel _because_ you care. You care so much it nearly kills you. Been around for a minute now and I can tell you that’s not somethin’ I see a lot of. And that was before sodding Heaven, where you got because you’re you. Gotta think bein’ torn away from there, forced back here among us lesser mortals—or immortals—you’d feel like you’d been punished, yeah?”

Buffy felt her lip trembling, felt the rush all over again. “Did I— _she_ tell you that?”

A sad smile tugged at his lips. “Didn’t have to. See it, don’t I? So I give her what she needs—whether it’s a brawl or a shag—and love her best I can. All I can do. Remind her that this might not be Heaven, but it’s all right, once you get past the smell.”

The bark of laughter that tore out of her throat surprised her so much she nearly toppled back onto the bed. Would have, had Spike not caught her. She laughed again, startled at the sound, and wiped at her cheeks.

The look on his face was one of careful restraint, though his eyes were twinkling. “Don’t have that where you are,” he said. “Someone to do the remindin’, that is. Been managin’ all on your own.”

“Not alone.” She glanced at the floor, her smile dying. “I have you. Just…not like this.”

“Well, one of the things you can set straight when you get home, yeah?”

“And if that doesn’t happen?”

“It’s going to, Slayer. Don’t bloody care what Anyanka told us. You always find a way—it’s what you do-gooders are the best at.” Spike tilted her chin up so that their eyes met again. “Haven’t forgotten that you blasted Dru’s birthday gift to kingdom bloody come when that was supposed to be impossible.”

“What?”

“Tall bloke, strong jaw, called himself the Judge? Stopped him right quick.”

God, it felt like a thousand years had passed since then. Buffy snickered, though, feeling a spark of something. Not warmth, necessarily, but not all-consuming emptiness either. Not the thing that had haunted her on her walk from the crypt to where she stood now. And anything that wasn’t _that_ was something she’d seize with both hands.

“Right,” Spike said, now looking around the room. “Anythin’ you fancy grabbin’ before we head out?”

“Head out?”

“Well, you packed up nice the other night but if there’s anythin’ else you want—”

“Huh? Where are we going?”

“Back to the crypt.” He waited, arching an eyebrow. “Where’d you think?”

Back to the crypt. She didn’t know why that surprised her, but it did. “Spike… No, not after—”

“Yeah, after. You think I’m leavin’ you here with bloody Peaches and his gun, you’re off your trolley.” Spike stepped forward again, wrapping a hand around her elbow and pulling her toward him. “We’re goin’ back to the crypt. Gonna get some food in you and suss out where to look next.”

“For the paw.”

“That’s right.”

“And when we can’t find it? Or when we find it and can’t destroy it?”

He shook his head, not bothering to respond to that. “Look, we got lucky that your husband is out. Don’t really feature tryin’ to explain what you’re doin’ here in the middle of the bloody day and why his ammo’s scattered all over the place, do you?”

She glanced to the mattress where the bullets had landed after he’d emptied the chambers. “Do you know where he is?”

“No, and don’t much care.” Spike arched an eyebrow and nodded toward the door. “If you’ve got nothin’ else to collect, better skip on out before he comes home.”

Buffy supposed there was no arguing with that, so she didn’t try. Instead, she offered a shaky nod and looked around as though a need would announce itself. There was nothing except the keepsake box, which she definitely didn’t need to leave just lying around. She’d already made it easy enough to access by busting it open. “Umm,” she said, scooping it off the bed, “maybe we should take this? Just…not to add to the fire, you know? I don’t know if Angel is the snooping type, but he might become one if he doesn’t hear from me for a few days.”

Spike was still a beat. Then he swallowed and nodded. “Right,” he said, his voice a bit scratchy. “Let’s be off.”

And somehow, that was that. End of the argument, resolution achieved. Buffy let Spike steer her out of a room she’d intended to never leave again, not whole but not quite as broken as she’d been when she’d gotten home.

He’d come after her. After everything, he’d come after her. He wasn’t angry. He _understood_.

Maybe that was one of the benefits of not having a soul, though she couldn’t say it was because he didn’t care. All Spike did was care, and care, and care, and care, even when it didn’t make sense. Even when it would have been easier, better, for him not to care at all.

But that wasn’t Spike. Never had been.

And right now, this moment, Buffy couldn’t say she wasn’t glad.

* * * * *

Spike leaped into caretaker mode the second they arrived at his crypt. He didn’t ask her what she wanted, just seemed to know intuitively, which would have to stop surprising her at some point. There was just so much about her, the odds and ends that made up Buffy that no one had ever bothered to learn. That he knew what she needed was a mindless distraction and what sort would do best; hell, that he even _had_ a copy of _Clueless_ in his crypt and would deign to watch it. That he scurried off to make her some popcorn the second after he’d fed the tape into the VCR. All of it without a word, not even a look to see if he was on the right track.

It was something else, being this seen.

Spike also knew the way she liked to watch movies—with full running commentary. He didn’t waste any time poking fun at the characters, remarking on the extras and noting who would be the easiest to pick off in a decent night’s hunt. When she responded by throwing a piece of popcorn at him, he just winked and popped it in his mouth. Said that was the only way he could get her to share, identifying the characters most likely to snuff it if they ever took a walk in the real world. When he wasn’t doing that, he was mocking how Buffy had affected Alicia Silverstone’s valley girl talk, particularly when they’d first met, and how that had been a “right clever disguise,” making him think she was another empty-headed Californian, even if he’d learned since then that blonde was _not_ her natural hair color. This resulted in more popcorn being lobbed his way, which was naturally his intent, evil not-so mastermind that he was. Then he’d about made her jaw hit the floor by drawing comparisons to a Jane Austen novel, of all things—one that apparently he’d read more than once.

At that, he’d grinned. “Same look, you know.”

“What?”

“First time I whipped out my book smarts while watchin’ this flick, you stared at me all goggle-eyed. Enough to make a bloke self-conscious.”

“It’s just…you plus ancient chick-lit is not exactly a connection I’d make on my own.”

“Oi, watch what you’re callin’ ancient, love. Mind tellin’ me what exactly’s wrong with bein’ well-read?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Didn’t seem to have any trouble believin’ that I knew Shakespeare well enough.”

No, she hadn’t, but Shakespeare had always seemed more universal and less gender-specific than Jane Austen. Not that Buffy had actually read any Jane Austen, though she’d tried, back before the days of slayage. Back when her mother had been at home more, not the sole breadwinner, and had time for things like book clubs. Joyce’s club had covered _Pride and Prejudice_ in conjunction with the airing of the miniseries starring Colin Firth, and Buffy had loved the idea of a bunch of friends gathering around to discuss a book. It sounded elegant, sophisticated, some bit of high culture she could add to her Hemery High street-cred. Not only was Buffy Summers popular, she was also _smart_. That ambition lasted until she got to the actual reading part and suffered a quick defeat at the hands of confusing old-timey language.

Hell, she’d never even made it through the miniseries, which she’d attempted to watch on video after she and Angel had started dating and she’d had her “extravagant ladies of his time were way more sophisticated” crisis. But the miniseries was an exercise in dull—not only were there no vampires to speak of, but worrying about things like money and who-would-marry-who seemed really shortsighted, considering Buffy had a job that was literally do-or-die.

Needless to say, discovering she’d been an unwitting Austen fan since 1995 was a bit of a shock, not to mention a wonderful distraction. Buffy had managed to relax enough, listening to Spike point out various parallels, that she’d closed her eyes to focus on the rumbling of his voice, and not opened them until at least three hours later, when he prodded her shoulder to let her know he’d picked up dinner. It didn’t hit her until she was halfway through her carton of chicken fried rice that he’d planned it that way—lull her to sleep with a movie so he could sneak off without fear of what she might do if left alone.

They didn’t talk about any of what had happened until the wee hours of the morning, following a patrol he had insisted they go on— _“Gotta take it out on someone, sweets.”_ —and after he’d led her downstairs to the scene of the crime.

Buffy had followed. Arguing with him after he’d looked after her so thoroughly seemed rude, and part of her hoped she might be able to trick herself into just going with the flow as well as he was. But the thing she’d done lurked in shadows of her mind, waiting for a weak moment. Waiting to spring out at her and remind her just how badly she’d screwed up and how close she’d come to crossing the line she’d always viewed as uncrossable. The weight of the despair she’d felt while sitting in the bedroom she shared with Angel, holding his gun, more alone than she’d ever been—that wasn’t something she could just walk off, and she knew it. Even if Spike had made sure to fill the hours in between then and now with as much _other_ as he could to keep her from dwelling in dark places.

But then he surprised her again.

“Figure you’ll need him tonight,” Spike said, rising to his feet and tossing her the familiar fuzzy form of Mr. Gordo. “Keeps bad dreams away, yeah?”

Buffy just stared—first at the stuffed pig in her hands then at the chest that he had been rummaging through. “How much of my stuff do we keep here?”

“Damn near all of it,” he replied, nonplussed. “Wasn’t always like this. Nicked what I could from your mum’s gallery that you wanted kept of her and the rest from the house, after your darling husband put it up for sale. He never bothered to ask where most of it had gone off to when he came back. Don’t think he cared all that much.” Spike jutted his chin toward the pig Buffy had now hugged to her. “Always meant to give that to Dawn. Never remembered to do it, though, the few times we managed to pull one over on ol’ Hank. Was right brassed with myself about it when I couldn’t find her again but worked out all right. Pig knew it needed to come home to you.”

Buffy pressed her lips together, hoping to stave off a fresh breakdown. “Thank you.”

“So, think you can get some kip?”

Maybe. Mr. Gordo was magical like that, could make anything feel normal. “Where are you going to sleep?” she asked.

Spike answered by stalking over to his bed and throwing the sheets back. “Same as always, Slayer.”

“But… Spike—”

“Said it wouldn’t happen again, didn’t you?” He climbed onto the bed, then leaned his elbows on his knees and favored her with a look that was pure obstinacy. As though he were daring her…which of course he was. He knew her well enough to know that tactic typically worked. Something he confirmed when she gave a short nod and he smiled as though he’d won something. “Then we don’t have a problem,” he said.

“But—”

“I wake up tangled around you, pet, that’s not your doin’. Can’t promise I won’t, but maybe the pig’ll stand guard for that, too.”

Buffy hesitated another moment, absently running her fingers through Mr. Gordo’s love-worn fur. “You don’t have to do this,” she said at length. “I can sleep upstairs or—”

“Or you can get your biteable arse over here before I drag you over by the hair.”

It seemed too easy. It _was_ too easy, and she didn’t think it was supposed to be. Not after what she’d done. But she found herself moving forward anyway, clutching Mr. Gordo like he was her lucky talisman, and in seconds she was under the sheet with her head against the pillow. A full reset—one she didn’t deserve.

She listened to the rhythmic lull of those unneeded breaths of his, which seemed to offset the frantic thumps of her heart. Then the question bubbled off her lips without waiting for her brain’s permission.

“Why?”

She didn’t elaborate, but then, she didn’t need to.

“I love you,” Spike said simply. “Always, Slayer.”

Her lower lip began to tremble, and she felt the rush of new tears. The sensation alone exhausted her but she couldn’t shove it back.

“Whatever you did, whatever you’ve done, you did outta somethin’ dark and desperate,” he continued a moment later. “And I know more about _that_ than you ever will, even if most of the bad I’ve done I did ’cause it sounded like fun and I was bored.” He paused. “You couldn’t be as bad as me if you tried, and you love me anyway, evil bastard that I am. Or she does—the you that’s not you.”

Buffy drew in a shaky breath, a tear skating down her cheek, irritating against her dried-out skin. “I don’t know how to love like that.”

“Yes, you do.”

That was all he said—all she said, too, and everything fell still as her mind detached from thought and feeling, succumbing to the sweet blanket of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to note that Spike's views on what happened in his crypt aren't mine. I had trouble picturing him viewing the encounter the way Buffy did. 
> 
> Fun fact: The term chick-lit was popularized in the mid-90s. I had to look it up to make sure it wasn't an anachronism.


End file.
